PETTY TROUBLES OF MARRIED LIFE

 PART SECOND

 BY

 HONORE DE BALZAC

 PREFACE

 If, reader, you have grasped the intent of this book, --and infinite honor is done you by the supposition: the profoundest author does not always comprehend, I may say never comprehends, the different meanings of his book, nor its bearing, nor the good nor the harm it may do--if, then, you have bestowed some attention upon these little scenes of married life, you have perhaps noticed their color--

 "What color?" some grocer will doubtless ask; "books are bound in yellow, blue, green, pearl-gray, white--"

 Alas! books possess another color, they are dyed by the author, and certain writers borrow their dye. Some books let their color come off on to others. More than this. Books are dark or fair, light brown or red. They have a sex, too! I know of male books, and female books, of books which, sad to say, have no sex, which we hope is not the case with this one, supposing that you do this collection of nosographic sketches the honor of calling it a book. 

 Thus far, the troubles we have described have been exclusively inflicted by the wife upon the husband. You have therefore seen only the masculine side of the book. And if the author really has the sense of hearing for which we give him credit, he has already caught more than one indignant exclamation or remonstrance:

 "He tells us of nothing but vexations suffered by our husbands, as if we didn't have our petty troubles, too!"

 Oh, women! You have been heard, for if you do not always make yourselves understood, you are always sure to make yourselves heard. 

 It would therefore be signally unjust to lay upon you alone the reproaches that every being brought under the yoke (_conjugium_) has the right to heap upon that necessary, sacred, useful, eminently conservative institution, --one, however, that is often somewhat of an encumbrance, and tight about the joints, though sometimes it is also too loose there. 

 I will go further! Such partiality would be a piece of idiocy. 

 A man, --not a writer, for in a writer there are many men, --an author, rather, should resemble Janus, see behind and before, become a spy, examine an idea in all its phases, delve alternately into the soul of Alceste and into that of Philaenete, know everything though he does not tell it, never be tiresome, and--

 We will not conclude this programme, for we should tell the whole, and that would be frightful for those who reflect upon the present condition of literature. 

 Furthermore, an author who speaks for himself in the middle of his book, resembles the old fellow in "The Speaking Picture, " when he puts his face in the hole cut in the painting. The author does not forget that in the Chamber, no one can take the floor _between two votes_. Enough, therefore!

 Here follows the female portion of the book: for, to resemble marriage perfectly, it ought to be more or less hermaphroditic. 

 PETTY TROUBLES OF MARRIED LIFE

 HUSBANDS DURING THE SECOND MONTH. 

Two young married women, Caroline and Stephanie, who had been earlyfriends at M'lle Machefer's boarding school, one of the mostcelebrated educational institutions in the Faubourg St. Honore, met ata ball given by Madame de Fischtaminel, and the following conversationtook place in a window-seat in the boudoir. 

It was so hot that a man had acted upon the idea of going to breathethe fresh night air, some time before the two young women. He hadplaced himself in the angle of the balcony, and, as there were manyflowers before the window, the two friends thought themselves alone. This man was the author's best friend. 

One of the two ladies, standing at the corner of the embrasure, keptwatch by looking at the boudoir and the parlors. The other had soplaced herself as not to be in the draft, which was neverthelesstempered by the muslin and silk curtains. 

The boudoir was empty, the ball was just beginning, the gaming-tableswere open, offering their green cloths and their packs of cards stillcompressed in the frail case placed upon them by the customs office. The second quadrille was in progress. 

All who go to balls will remember that phase of large parties when theguests are not yet all arrived, but when the rooms are already filled--a moment which gives the mistress of the house a transitory pang ofterror. This moment is, other points of comparison apart, like thatwhich decides a victory or the loss of a battle. 

You will understand, therefore, how what was meant to be a secret nowobtains the honors of publicity. 

"Well, Caroline?"

"Well, Stephanie?"

"Well?"

"Well?"

A double sigh. 

"Have you forgotten our agreement?"

"No. "

"Why haven't you been to see me, then?"

"I am never left alone. Even here we shall hardly have time to talk. "

"Ah! if Adolphe were to get into such habits as that!" exclaimedCaroline. 

"You saw us, Armand and me, when he paid me what is called, I don'tknow why, his court. "

"Yes, I admired him, I thought you very happy, you had found yourideal, a fine, good-sized man, always well dressed, with yellowgloves, his beard well shaven, patent leather boots, a clean shirt, exquisitely neat, and so attentive--"

"Yes, yes, go on. "

"In short, quite an elegant man: his voice was femininely sweet, andthen such gentleness! And his promises of happiness and liberty! Hissentences were veneered with rosewood. He stocked his conversationwith shawls and laces. In his smallest expression you heard therumbling of a coach and four. Your wedding presents were magnificent. Armand seemed to me like a husband of velvet, of a robe of birds'feathers in which you were to be wrapped. "

"Caroline, my husband uses tobacco. "

"So does mine; that is, he smokes. "

"But mine, dear, uses it as they say Napoleon did: in short, he chews, and I hold tobacco in horror. The monster found it out, and wentwithout out it for seven months. "

"All men have their habits. They absolutely must use something. "

"You have no idea of the tortures I endure. At night I am awakenedwith a start by one of my own sneezes. As I go to sleep my motionsbring the grains of snuff scattered over the pillow under my nose, Iinhale, and explode like a mine. It seems that Armand, the wretch, isused to these _surprises_, and doesn't wake up. I find tobaccoeverywhere, and I certainly didn't marry the customs office. "

"But, my dear child, what does this trifling inconvenience amount to, if your husband is kind and possesses a good disposition?"

"He is as cold as marble, as particular as an old bachelor, ascommunicative as a sentinel; and he's one of those men who say yes toeverything, but who never do anything but what they want to. "

"Deny him, once. "

"I've tried it. "

"What came of it?"

"He threatened to reduce my allowance, and to keep back a sum bigenough for him to get along without me. "

"Poor Stephanie! He's not a man, he's a monster. "

"A calm and methodical monster, who wears a scratch, and who, everynight--"

"Well, every night--"

"Wait a minute!--who takes a tumbler every night, and puts seven falseteeth in it. "

"What a trap your marriage was! At any rate, Armand is rich. "

"Who knows?"

"Good heavens! Why, you seem to me on the point of becoming veryunhappy--or very happy. "

"Well, dear, how is it with you?"

"Oh, as for me, I have nothing as yet but a pin that pricks me: but itis intolerable. "

"Poor creature! You don't know your own happiness: come, what is it?"

Here the young woman whispered in the other's ear, so that it wasimpossible to catch a single word. The conversation recommenced, orrather finished by a sort of inference. 

"So, your Adolphe is jealous?"

"Jealous of whom? We never leave each other, and that, in itself, isan annoyance. I can't stand it. I don't dare to gape. I am expected tobe forever enacting the woman in love. It's fatiguing. "

"Caroline?"

"Well?"

"What are you going to do?"

"Resign myself. What are you?

"Fight the customs office. "

This little trouble tends to prove that in the matter of personaldeception, the two sexes can well cry quits. 

 DISAPPOINTED AMBITION. 

 I. CHODOREILLE THE GREAT. 

A young man has forsaken his natal city in the depths of one of thedepartments, rather clearly marked by M. Charles Dupin. He felt thatglory of some sort awaited him: suppose that of a painter, a novelist, a journalist, a poet, a great statesman. 

Young Adolphe de Chodoreille--that we may be perfectly understood--wished to be talked about, to become celebrated, to be somebody. This, therefore, is addressed to the mass of aspiring individualsbrought to Paris by all sorts of vehicles, whether moral or material, and who rush upon the city one fine morning with the hydrophobicpurpose of overturning everybody's reputation, and of buildingthemselves a pedestal with the ruins they are to make, --untildisenchantment follows. As our intention is to specify thispeculiarity so characteristic of our epoch, let us take from amongthe various personages the one whom the author has elsewhere called_A Distinguished Provencal_. 

Adolphe has discovered that the most admirable trade is that whichconsists in buying a bottle of ink, a bunch of quills, and a ream ofpaper, at a stationer's for twelve francs and a half, and in sellingthe two thousand sheets in the ream over again, for something likefifty thousand francs, after having, of course, written upon each leaffifty lines replete with style and imagination. 

This problem, --twelve francs and a half metamorphosed into fiftythousand francs, at the rate of five sous a line--urges numerousfamilies who might advantageously employ their members in theretirement of the provinces, to thrust them into the vortex of Paris. 

The young man who is the object of this exportation, invariably passesin his natal town for a man of as much imagination as the most famousauthor. He has always studied well, he writes very nice poetry, he isconsidered a fellow of parts: he is besides often guilty of a charmingtale published in the local paper, which obtains the admiration of thedepartment. 

His poor parents will never know what their son has come to Paris tolearn at great cost, namely: That it is difficult to be a writer andto understand the French language short of a dozen years of heculeanlabor: That a man must have explored every sphere of social life, tobecome a genuine novelist, inasmuch as the novel is the privatehistory of nations: That the great story-tellers, Aesop, Lucian, Boccaccio, Rabelais, Cervantes, Swift, La Fontaine, Lesage, Sterne, Voltaire, Walter Scott, the unknown Arabians of the _Thousand and OneNights_, were all men of genius as well as giants of erudition. 

Their Adolphe serves his literary apprenticeship in two or threecoffee-houses, becomes a member of the Society of Men of Letters, attacks, with or without reason, men of talent who don't read hisarticles, assumes a milder tone on seeing the powerlessness of hiscriticisms, offers novelettes to the papers which toss them from oneto the other as if they were shuttlecocks: and, after five or sixyears of exercises more or less fatiguing, of dreadful privationswhich seriously tax his parents, he attains a certain position. 

This position may be described as follows: Thanks to a sort ofreciprocal support extended to each other, and which an ingeniouswriter has called "Mutual Admiration, " Adolphe often sees his namecited among the names of celebrities, either in the prospectuses ofthe book-trade, or in the lists of newspapers about to appear. Publishers print the title of one of his works under the deceitfulheading "IN PRESS, " which might be called the typographical menagerieof bears. [*] Chodoreille is sometimes mentioned among the promisingyoung men of the literary world. 

[*] A bear (_ours_) is a play which has been refused by a multitude of theatres, but which is finally represented at a time when some manager or other feels the need of one. The word has necessarily passed from the language of the stage into the jargon of journalism, and is applied to novels which wander the streets in search of a publisher. 

For eleven years Adolphe Chodoreille remains in the ranks of thepromising young men: he finally obtains a free entrance to thetheatres, thanks to some dirty work or certain articles of dramaticcriticism: he tries to pass for a good fellow; and as he loses hisillusions respecting glory and the world of Paris, he gets into debtand his years begin to tell upon him. 

A paper which finds itself in a tight place asks him for one of hisbears revised by his friends. This has been retouched and revampedevery five years, so that it smells of the pomatum of each prevailingand then forgotten fashion. To Adolphe it becomes what the famous cap, which he was constantly staking, was to Corporal Trim, for during fiveyears "Anything for a Woman" (the title decided upon) "will be one ofthe most entertaining productions of our epoch. "

After eleven years, Chodoreille is regarded as having written somerespectable things, five or six tales published in the dismalmagazines, in ladies' newspapers, or in works intended for children oftender age. 

As he is a bachelor, and possesses a coat and a pair of blackcassimere trousers, and when he pleases may thus assume the appearanceof an elegant diplomat, and as he is not without a certain intelligentair, he is admitted to several more or less literary salons: he bowsto the five or six academicians who possess genius, influence ortalent, he visits two or three of our great poets, he allows himself, in coffee-rooms, to call the two or three justly celebrated women ofour epoch by their Christian names; he is on the best of terms withthe blue stockings of the second grade, --who ought to be called_socks_, --and he shakes hands and takes glasses of absinthe with thestars of the smaller newspapers. 

Such is the history of every species of ordinary men--men who havebeen denied what they call good luck. This good luck is nothing lessthan unyielding will, incessant labor, contempt for an easily woncelebrity, immense learning, and that patience which, according toBuffon, is the whole of genius, but which certainly is the half of it. 

You do not yet see any indication of a petty trouble for Caroline. Youimagine that this history of five hundred young men engaged at thismoment in wearing smooth the paving stones of Paris, was written as asort of warning to the families of the eighty-six departments ofFrance: but read these two letters which lately passed between twogirls differently married, and you will see that it was as necessaryas the narrative by which every true melodrama was until latelyexpected to open. You will divine the skillful manoeuvres of theParisian peacock spreading his tail in the recesses of his nativevillage, and polishing up, for matrimonial purposes, the rays of hisglory, which, like those of the sun, are only warm and brilliant at adistance. 

From Madame Claire de la Roulandiere, nee Jugault, to Madame Adolphede Chodoreille, nee Heurtaut. 

"VIVIERS. 

"You have not yet written to me, and it's real unkind in you. Don'tyou remember that the happier was to write first and to console herwho remained in the country?

"Since your departure for Paris, I have married Monsieur de laRoulandiere, the president of the tribunal. You know him, and you canjudge whether I am happy or not, with my heart _saturated_, as it is, with our ideas. I was not ignorant what my lot would be: I live withthe ex-president, my husband's uncle, and with my mother-in-law, whohas preserved nothing of the ancient parliamentary society of Aix butits pride and its severity of manners. I am seldom alone, I never goout unless accompanied by my mother-in-law or my husband. We receivethe heavy people of the city in the evening. They play whist at twosous a point, and I listen to conversations of this nature:

"'Monsieur Vitremont is dead, and leaves two hundred and eightythousand francs, ' says the associate judge, a young man offorty-seven, who is as entertaining as a northwest wind. 

"'Are you quite sure of that?'

"The _that_ refers to the two hundred and eighty thousand francs. Alittle judge then holds forth, he runs over the investments, theothers discuss their value, and it is definitely settled that if hehas not left two hundred and eighty thousand, he left something nearit. 

"Then comes a universal concert of eulogy heaped upon the dead man'sbody, for having kept his bread under lock and key, for havingshrewdly invested his little savings accumulated sou by sou, in order, probably, that the whole city and those who expect legacies mayapplaud and exclaim in admiration, 'He leaves two hundred and eightythousand francs!' Now everybody has rich relations of whom they say'Will he leave anything like it?' and thus they discuss the quick asthey have discussed the dead. 

"They talk of nothing but the prospects of fortune, the prospects of avacancy in office, the prospects of the harvest. 

"When we were children, and used to look at those pretty little whitemice, in the cobbler's window in the rue St. Maclou, that turned andturned the circular cage in which they were imprisoned, how far I wasfrom thinking that they would one day be a faithful image of my life!

"Think of it, my being in this condition!--I who fluttered my wings somuch more than you, I whose imagination was so vagabond! My sins havebeen greater than yours, and I am the more severely punished. I havebidden farewell to my dreams: I am _Madame la Presidente_ in all myglory, and I resign myself to giving my arm for forty years to my bigawkward Roulandiere, to living meanly in every way, and to havingforever before me two heavy brows and two wall-eyes pierced in ayellow face, which is destined never to know what it is to smile. 

"But you, Caroline dear, you who, between ourselves, were admittedamong the big girls while I still gamboled among the little ones, youwhose only sin was pride, you, --at the age of twenty-seven, and with adowry of two hundred thousand francs, --capture and captivate a trulygreat man, one of the wittiest men in Paris, one of the two talentedmen that our village has produced. --What luck!

"You now circulate in the most brilliant society of Paris. Thanks tothe sublime privileges of genius. You may appear in all the salons ofthe Faubourg St. Germain, and be cordially received. You have theexquisite enjoyment of the company of the two or three celebratedwomen of our age, where so many good things are said, where the happyspeeches which arrive out here like Congreve rockets, are first firedoff. You go to the Baron Schinner's of whom Adolphe so often spoke tous, whom all the great artists and foreigners of celebrity visit. Inshort, before long, you will be one of the queens of Paris, if youwish. You can receive, too, and have at your house the lions ofliterature, fashion and finance, whether male or female, for Adolphespoke in such terms about his illustrious friendships and his intimacywith the favorites of the hour, that I imagine you giving andreceiving honors. 

"With your ten thousand francs a year, and the legacy from your AuntCarabas, added to the twenty thousand francs that your husband earns, you must keep a carriage; and since you go to all the theatres withoutpaying, since journalists are the heroes of all the inaugurations soruinous for those who keep up with the movement of Paris, and sincethey are constantly invited to dinner, you live as if you had anincome of sixty thousand francs a year! Happy Caroline! I don't wonderyou forget me!

"I can understand how it is that you have not a moment to yourself. Your bliss is the cause of your silence, so I pardon you. Still, if, fatigued with so many pleasures, you one day, upon the summit of yourgrandeur, think of your poor Claire, write to me, tell me what amarriage with a great man is, describe those great Parisian ladies, especially those who write. Oh! I should _so_ much like to know whatthey are made of! Finally don't forget anything, unless you forgetthat you are loved, as ever, by your poor

"CLAIRE JUGAULT. "

From Madame Adolphe de Chodoreille to Madame la Presidente de laRoulandiere, at Viviers. 

"PARIS. 

"Ah! my poor Claire, could you have known how many wretched littlegriefs your innocent letter would awaken, you never would have writtenit. Certainly no friend, and not even an enemy, on seeing a woman witha thousand mosquito-bites and a plaster over them, would amuse herselfby tearing it off and counting the stings. 

"I will begin by telling you that for a woman of twenty-seven, with aface still passable, but with a form a little too much like that ofthe Emperor Nicholas for the humble part I play, I am happy! Let metell you why: Adolphe, rejoicing in the deceptions which have fallenupon me like a hail-storm, smoothes over the wounds in my self-love byso much affection, so many attentions, and such charming things, that, in good truth, women--so far as they are simply women--would be gladto find in the man they marry defects so advantageous. But all men ofletters (Adolphe, alas! is barely a man of letters), who are beingsnot a bit less irritable, nervous, fickle and eccentric than women, are far from possessing such solid qualities as those of Adolphe, andI hope they have not all been as unfortunate as he. 

"Ah! Claire, we love each other well enough for me to tell you thesimple truth. I have saved my husband, dear, from profound butskillfully concealed poverty. Far from receiving twenty thousandfrancs a year, he has not earned that sum in the entire fifteen yearsthat he has been at Paris. We occupy a third story in the rue Joubert, and pay twelve hundred francs for it; we have some eighty-five hundredfrancs left, with which I endeavor to keep house honorably. 

"I have brought Adolphe luck; for since our marriage, he has obtainedthe control of a feuilleton which is worth four hundred francs a monthto him, though it takes but a small portion of his time. He owes thissituation to an investment. We employed the seventy thousand francsleft me by my Aunt Carabas in giving security for a newspaper; on thiswe get nine per cent, and we have stock besides. Since thistransaction, which was concluded some ten months ago, our income hasdoubled, and we now possess a competence, I can complain of mymarriage in a pecuniary point of view no more than as regards myaffections. My vanity alone has suffered, and my ambition has beenswamped. You will understand the various petty troubles which haveassailed me, by a single specimen. 

"Adolphe, you remember, appeared to us on intimate terms with thefamous Baroness Schinner, so renowned for her wit, her influence, herwealth and her connection with celebrated men. I supposed that he waswelcomed at her house as a friend: my husband presented me, and I wascoldly received. I saw that her rooms were furnished with extravagantluxury; and instead of Madame Schinner's returning my call, I receiveda card, twenty days afterward, and at an insolently improper hour. 

"On arriving at Paris, I went to walk upon the boulevard, proud of myanonymous great man. He nudged me with his elbow, and said, pointingout a fat little ill-dressed man, 'There's so and so!' He mentionedone of the seven or eight illustrious men in France. I got ready mylook of admiration, and I saw Adolphe rapturously doffing his hat tothe truly great man, who replied by the curt little nod that youvouchsafe a person with whom you have doubtless exchanged hardly fourwords in ten years. Adolphe had begged a look for my sake. 'Doesn't heknow you?' I said to my husband. 'Oh, yes, but he probably took me forsomebody else, ' replied he. 

"And so of poets, so of celebrated musicians, so of statesmen. But, asa compensation, we stop and talk for ten minutes in front of somearcade or other, with Messieurs Armand du Cantal, George Beaunoir, Felix Verdoret, of whom you have never heard. Mesdames ConstantineRamachard, Anais Crottat, and Lucienne Vouillon threaten me with their_blue_ friendship. We dine editors totally unknown in our province. Finally I have had the painful happiness of seeing Adolphe decline aninvitation to an evening party to which I was not bidden. 

"Oh! Claire dear, talent is still the rare flower of spontaneousgrowth, that no greenhouse culture can produce. I do not deceivemyself: Adolphe is an ordinary man, known, estimated as such: he hasno other chance, as he himself says, than to take his place among the_utilities_ of literature. He was not without wit at Viviers: but tobe a man of wit at Paris, you must possess every kind of wit informidable doses. 

"I esteem Adolphe: for, after some few fibs, he frankly confessed hisposition, and, without humiliating himself too deeply, he promisedthat I should be happy. He hopes, like numerous other ordinary men, toobtain some place, that of an assistant librarian, for instance, orthe pecuniary management of a newspaper. Who knows but we may get himelected deputy for Viviers, in the course of time?

"We live in obscurity; we have five or six friends of either sex whomwe like, and such is the brilliant style of life which your lettergilded with all the social splendors. 

"From time to time I am caught in a squall, or am the butt of somemalicious tongue. Thus, yesterday, at the opera, I heard one of ourmost ill-natured wits, Leon de Lora, say to one of our most famouscritics, 'It takes Chodoreille to discover the Caroline poplar on thebanks of the Rhone!' They had heard my husband call me by my Christianname. At Viviers I was considered handsome. I am tall, well made, andfat enough to satisfy Adolphe! In this way I learn that the beauty ofwomen from the country is, at Paris, precisely like the wit of countrygentleman. 

"In short, I am absolutely nobody, if that is what you wish to know:but if you desire to learn how far my philosophy goes, understand thatI am really happy in having found an ordinary man in my pretendedgreat one. 

"Farewell, dear Claire! It is still I, you see, who, in spite of mydelusions and the petty troubles of my life, am the most favorablysituated: for Adolphe is young, and a charming fellow. 

"CAROLINE HEURTAUT. "

Claire's reply contained, among other passages, the following: "I hopethat the indescribable happiness which you enjoy, will continue, thanks to your philosophy. " Claire, as any intimate female friendwould have done, consoled herself for her president by insinuationsrespecting Adolphe's prospects and future conduct. 

 II. ANOTHER GLANCE AT CHODOREILLE. 

(Letter discovered one day in a casket, while she was making me wait along time and trying to get rid of a hanger-on who could not be madeto understand hidden meanings. I caught cold--but I got hold of thisletter. )

This fatuous note was found on a paper which the notary's clerks hadthought of no importance in the inventory of the estate of M. Ferdinand de Bourgarel, who was mourned of late by politics, arts andamours, and in whom is ended the great Provencal house of Borgarelli;for as is generally known the name Bourgarel is a corruption ofBorgarelli just as the French Girardin is the Florentine Gherardini. 

An intelligent reader will find little difficulty in placing thisletter in its proper epoch in the lives of Adolphe and Caroline. 

"My dear Friend:

"I thought myself lucky indeed to marry an artist as superior in histalent as in his personal attributes, equally great in soul and mind, worldly-wise, and likely to rise by following the public road withoutbeing obliged to wander along crooked, doubtful by-paths. However, youknew Adolphe; you appreciated his worth. I am loved, he is a father, Iidolize our children. Adolphe is kindness itself to me; I admire andlove him. But, my dear, in this complete happiness lurks a thorn. Theroses upon which I recline have more than one fold. In the heart of awoman, folds speedily turn to wounds. These wounds soon bleed, theevil spreads, we suffer, the suffering awakens thoughts, the thoughtsswell and change the course of sentiment. 

"Ah, my dear, you shall know all about it, though it is a cruel thingto say--but we live as much by vanity as by love. To live by lovealone, one must dwell somewhere else than in Paris. What differencewould it make to us whether we had only one white percale gown, if theman we love did not see other women dressed differently, moreelegantly than we--women who inspire ideas by their ways, by amultitude of little things which really go to make up great passions?Vanity, my dear, is cousin-german to jealousy, to that beautiful andnoble jealousy which consists in not allowing one's empire to beinvaded, in reigning undisturbed in a soul, and passing one's lifehappily in a heart. 

"Ah, well, my woman's vanity is on the rack. Though some troubles mayseem petty indeed, I have learned, unfortunately, that in the homethere are no petty troubles. For everything there is magnified byincessant contact with sensations, with desires, with ideas. Such thenis the secret of that sadness which you have surprised in me and whichI did not care to explain. It is one of those things in which words gotoo far, and where writing holds at least the thought within bounds byestablishing it. The effects of a moral perspective differ soradically between what is said and what is written! All is so solemn, so serious on paper! One cannot commit any more imprudences. Is it notthis fact which makes a treasure out of a letter where one gives one'sself over to one's thoughts?

"You doubtless thought me wretched, but I am only wounded. Youdiscovered me sitting alone by the fire, and no Adolphe. I had justfinished putting the children to bed; they were asleep. Adolphe forthe tenth time had been invited out to a house where I do not go, where they want Adolphe without his wife. There are drawing-roomswhere he goes without me, just at there are many pleasures in which healone is the guest. If he were M. De Navarreins and I a d'Espard, society would never think of separating us; it would want us alwaystogether. His habits are formed; he does not suspect the humiliationwhich weighs upon my heart. Indeed, if he had the slightest inkling ofthis small sorrow which I am ashamed to own, he would drop society, hewould become more of a prig than the people who come between us. Buthe would hamper his progress, he would make enemies, he would raise upobstacles by imposing me upon the salons where I would be subject to athousand slights. That is why I prefer my sufferings to what wouldhappen were they discovered. 

"Adolphe will succeed! He carries my revenge in his beautiful head, does this man of genius. One day the world shall pay for all theseslights. But when? Perhaps I shall be forty-five. My beautiful youthwill have passed in my chimney-corner, and with this thought: Adolphesmiles, he is enjoying the society of fair women, he is playing thedevoted to them, while none of these attentions come my way. 

"It may be that these will finally take him from me!

"No one undergoes slight without feeling it, and I feel that I amslighted, though young, beautiful and virtuous. Now, can I keep fromthinking this way? Can I control my anger at the thought that Adolpheis dining in the city without me? I take no part in his triumphs; I donot hear the witty or profound remarks made to others! I could nolonger be content with bourgeois receptions whence he rescued me, uponfinding me _distinguee_, wealthy, young, beautiful and witty. Therelies the evil, and it is irremediable. 

"In a word, for some cause, it is only since I cannot go to a certainsalon that I want to go there. Nothing is more natural of the ways ofa human heart. The ancients were wise in having their _gyneceums_. Thecollisions between the pride of the women, caused by these gatherings, though it dates back only four centuries, has cost our own day muchdisaffection and numerous bitter debates. 

"Be that as it may, my dear, Adolphe is always warmly welcomed when hecomes back home. Still, no nature is strong enough to await alwayswith the same ardor. What a morrow that will be, following the eveningwhen his welcome is less warm!

"Now do you see the depth of the fold which I mentioned? A fold in theheart is an abyss, like a crevasse in the Alps--a profundity whosedepth and extent we have never been able to calculate. Thus it isbetween two beings, no matter how near they may be drawn to eachother. One never realizes the weight of suffering which oppresses hisfriend. This seems such a little thing, yet one's life is affected byit in all its length, in all its breadth. I have thus argued withmyself; but the more I have argued, the more thoroughly have Irealized the extent of this hidden sorrow. And I can only let thecurrent carry me whither it will. 

"Two voices struggle for supremacy when--by a rarely fortunate chance--I am alone in my armchair waiting for Adolphe. One, I would wager, comes from Eugene Delacroix's _Faust_ which I have on my table. Mephistopheles speaks, that terrible aide who guides the swords sodexterously. He leaves the engraving, and places himself diabolicallybefore me, grinning through the hole which the great artist has placedunder his nose, and gazing at me with that eye whence fall rubies, diamonds, carriages, jewels, laces, silks, and a thousand luxuries tofeed the burning desire within me. 

"'Are you not fit for society?' he asks. 'You are the equal of thefairest duchesses. Your voice is like a siren's, your hands commandrespect and love. Ah! that arm!--place bracelets upon it, and howpleasingly it would rest upon the velvet of a robe! Your locks arechains which would fetter all men. And you could lay all your triumphsat Adolphe's feet, show him your power and never use it. Then he wouldfear, where now he lives in insolent certainty. Come! To action!Inhale a few mouthfuls of disdain and you will exhale clouds ofincense. Dare to reign! Are you not next to nothing here in yourchimney-corner? Sooner or later the pretty spouse, the beloved wifewill die, if you continue like this, in a dressing-gown. Come, and youshall perpetuate your sway through the arts of coquetry! Show yourselfin salons, and your pretty foot shall trample down the love of yourrivals. '

"The other voice comes from my white marble mantel, which rustles likea garment. I think I see a veritable goddess crowned with white roses, and bearing a palm-branch in her hand. Two blue eyes smile down on me. This simple image of virtue says to me:

"'Be content! Remain good always, and make this man happy. That is thewhole of your mission. The sweetness of angels triumphs over all pain. Faith in themselves has enabled the martyrs to obtain solace even onthe brasiers of their tormentors. Suffer a moment; you shall be happyin the end. '

"Sometimes Adolphe enters at that moment and I am content. But, mydear, I have less patience than love. I almost wish to tear in piecesthe woman who can go everywhere, and whose society is sought out bymen and women alike. What profound thought lies in the line ofMoliere:

 "'The world, dear Agnes, is a curious thing!'

"You know nothing of this petty trouble, you fortunate Mathilde! Youare well born. You can do a great deal for me. Just think! I can writeyou things that I dared not speak about. Your visits mean so much;come often to see your poor

 "Caroline. "

"Well, " said I to the notary's clerk, "do you know what was the natureof this letter to the late Bourgarel?"

"No. "

"A note of exchange. "

Neither clerk nor notary understood my meaning. Do you?

 THE PANGS OF INNOCENCE. 

"Yes, dear, in the married state, many things will happen to you whichyou are far from expecting: but then others will happen which youexpect still less. For instance--"

The author (may we say the ingenious author?) _qui castigat ridendomores_, and who has undertaken the _Petty Troubles of Married Life_, hardly needs to remark, that, for prudence' sake, he here allows alady of high distinction to speak, and that he does not assume theresponsibility of her language, though he professes the most sincereadmiration for the charming person to whom he owes his acquaintancewith this petty trouble. 

"For instance--" she says. 

He nevertheless thinks proper to avow that this person is neitherMadame Foullepointe, nor Madame de Fischtaminel, nor Madame Deschars. 

Madame Deschars is too prudish, Madame Foullepointe too absolute inher household, and she knows it; indeed, what doesn't she know? She isgood-natured, she sees good society, she wishes to have the best:people overlook the vivacity of her witticisms, as, under louis XIV, they overlooked the remarks of Madame Cornuel. They overlook a goodmany things in her; there are some women who are the spoiled childrenof public opinion. 

As to Madame de Fischtaminel, who is, in fact, connected with theaffair, as you shall see, she, being unable to recriminate, abstainsfrom words and recriminates in acts. 

We give permission to all to think that the speaker is Carolineherself, not the silly little Caroline of tender years. But Carolinewhen she has become a woman of thirty. 

"For instance, " she remarks to a young woman whom she is edifying, "you will have children, God willing. "

"Madame, " I say, "don't let us mix the deity up in this, unless it isan allusion--"

"You are impertinent, " she replies, "you shouldn't interrupt awoman--"

"When she is busy with children, I know: but, madame, you ought not totrifle with the innocence of young ladies. Mademoiselle is going to bemarried, and if she were led to count upon the intervention of theSupreme Being in this affair, she would fall into serious errors. Weshould not deceive the young. Mademoiselle is beyond the age whengirls are informed that their little brother was found under acabbage. "

"You evidently want to get me confused, " she replies, smiling andshowing the loveliest teeth in the world. "I am not strong enough toargue with you, so I beg you to let me go on with Josephine. What wasI saying?"

"That if I get married, I shall have children, " returns the younglady. 

"Very well. I will not represent things to you worse than they are, but it is extremely probable that each child will cost you a tooth. With every baby I have lost a tooth. "

"Happily, " I remark at this, "this trouble was with you less thanpetty, it was positively nothing. "--They were side teeth. --"But takenotice, miss, that this vexation has no absolute, unvarying characteras such. The annoyance depends upon the condition of the tooth. If thebaby causes the loss of a decayed tooth, you are fortunate to have ababy the more and a bad tooth the less. Don't let us confoundblessings with bothers. Ah! if you were to lose one of yourmagnificent front teeth, that would be another thing! And yet there ismany a woman that would give the best tooth in her head for a fine, healthy boy!"

"Well, " resumes Caroline, with animation, "at the risk of destroyingyour illusions, poor child, I'll just show you a petty trouble thatcounts! Ah, it's atrocious! And I won't leave the subject of dresswhich this gentleman considers the only subject we women are equalto. "

I protest by a gesture. 

"I had been married about two years, " continues Caroline, "and I lovedmy husband. I have got over it since and acted differently for hishappiness and mine. I can boast of having one of the happiest homes inParis. In short, my dear, I loved the monster, and, even when out insociety, saw no one but him. My husband had already said to me severaltimes, 'My dear, young women never dress well; your mother liked tohave you look like a stick, --she had her reasons for it. If you carefor my advice, take Madame de Fischtaminel for a model: she is a ladyof taste. ' I, unsuspecting creature that I was, saw no perfidy in therecommendation. 

"One evening as we returned from a party, he said, 'Did you notice howMadame de Fischtaminel was dressed!' 'Yes, very neatly. ' And I said tomyself, 'He's always talking about Madame de Fischtaminel; I mustreally dress just like her. ' I had noticed the stuff and the make ofthe dress, and the style of the trimmings. I was as happy as could be, as I went trotting about town, doing everything I could to obtain thesame articles. I sent for the very same dressmaker. 

"'You work for Madame de Fischtaminel, ' I said. 

"'Yes, madame. '

"'Well, I will employ you as my dressmaker, but on one condition: yousee I have procured the stuff of which her gown is made, and I wantyou to make me one exactly like it. '

"I confess that I did not at first pay any attention to a rathershrewd smile of the dressmaker, though I saw it and afterwardsaccounted for it. 'So like it, ' I added, 'that you can't tell themapart. '

"Oh, " says Caroline, interrupting herself and looking at me, "you menteach us to live like spiders in the depths of their webs, to seeeverything without seeming to look at it, to investigate the meaningand spirit of words, movements, looks. You say, 'How cunning womenare!' But you should say, 'How deceitful men are!'

"I can't tell you how much care, how many days, how many manoeuvres, it cost me to become Madame de Fischtaminel's duplicate! But these areour battles, child, " she adds, returning to Josephine. "I could notfind a certain little embroidered neckerchief, a very marvel! Ifinally learned that it was made to order. I unearthed theembroideress, and ordered a kerchief like Madame de Fischtaminel's. The price was a mere trifle, one hundred and fifty francs! It had beenordered by a gentleman who had made a present of it to Madame deFischtaminel. All my savings were absorbed by it. Now we women ofParis are all of us very much restricted in the article of dress. There is not a man worth a hundred thousand francs a year, that losesten thousand a winter at whist, who does not consider his wifeextravagant, and is not alarmed at her bills for what he calls 'rags'!'Let my savings go, ' I said. And they went. I had the modest pride ofa woman in love: I would not speak a word to Adolphe of my dress; Iwanted it to be a surprise, goose that I was! Oh, how brutally you mentake away our blessed ignorance!"

This remark is meant for me, for me who had taken nothing from thelady, neither tooth, nor anything whatever of the things with a nameand without a name that may be taken from a woman. 

"I must tell you that my husband took me to Madame de Fischtaminel's, where I dined quite often. I heard her say to him, 'Why, your wifelooks very well!' She had a patronizing way with me that I put upwith: Adolphe wished that I could have her wit and preponderance insociety. In short, this phoenix of women was my model. I studied andcopied her, I took immense pains not to be myself--oh!--it was a poemthat no one but us women can understand! Finally, the day of mytriumph dawned. My heart beat for joy, as if I were a child, as if Iwere what we all are at twenty-two. My husband was going to call forme for a walk in the Tuileries: he came in, I looked at him radiantwith joy, but he took no notice. Well, I can confess it now, it wasone of those frightful disasters--but I will say nothing about it--this gentleman here would make fun of me. "

I protest by another movement. 

"It was, " she goes on, for a woman never stops till she has told thewhole of a thing, "as if I had seen an edifice built by a fairycrumble into ruins. Adolphe manifested not the slightest surprise. Wegot into the carriage. Adolphe noticed my sadness, and asked me whatthe matter was: I replied as we always do when our hearts are wrung bythese petty vexations, 'Oh, nothing!' Then he took his eye-glass, andstared at the promenaders on the Champs Elysees, for we were to go therounds of the Champs Elysees, before taking our walk at the Tuileries. Finally, a fit of impatience seized me. I felt a slight attack offever, and when I got home, I composed myself to smile. 'You haven'tsaid a word about my dress!' I muttered. 'Ah, yes, your gown issomewhat like Madame de Fischtaminel's. ' He turned on his heel andwent away. 

"The next day I pouted a little, as you may readily imagine. Just aswe were finishing breakfast by the fire in my room--I shall neverforget it--the embroideress called to get her money for theneckerchief. I paid her. She bowed to my husband as if she knew him. Iran after her on pretext of getting her to receipt the bill, and said:'You didn't ask _him_ so much for Madame de Fischtaminel's kerchief!''I assure you, madame, it's the same price, the gentleman did not beatme down a mite. ' I returned to my room where I found my husbandlooking as foolish as--"

She hesitates and then resumes: "As a miller just made a bishop. 'Iunderstand, love, now, that I shall never be anything more than_somewhat like_ Madame de Fischtaminel. ' 'You refer to herneckerchief, I suppose: well, I _did_ give it to her, --it was for herbirthday. You see, we were formerly--' 'Ah, you were formerly moreintimate than you are now!' Without replying to this, he added, '_Butit's altogether moral. _'

"He took his hat and went out, leaving me with this fine declarationof the Rights of Man. He did not return and came home late at night. Iremained in my chamber and wept like a Magdalen, in thechimney-corner. You may laugh at me, if you will, " she adds, lookingat me, "but I shed tears over my youthful illusions, and I wept, too, for spite, at having been taken for a dupe. I remembered thedressmaker's smile! Ah, that smile reminded me of the smiles of anumber of women, who laughed at seeing me so innocent and unsuspectingat Madame de Fischtaminel's! I wept sincerely. Until now I had a rightto give my husband credit for many things which he did not possess, butin the existence of which young married women pertinaciously believe. 

"How many great troubles are included in this petty one! You men are avulgar set. There is not a woman who does not carry her delicacy sofar as to embroider her past life with the most delightful fibs, whileyou--but I have had my revenge. "

"Madame, " I say, "you are giving this young lady too muchinformation. "

"True, " she returns, "I will tell you the sequel some other time. "

"Thus, you see, mademoiselle, " I say, "you imagine you are buying aneckerchief and you find a _petty trouble_ round your neck: if you getit given to you--"

"It's a _great_ trouble, " retorts the woman of distinction. "Let usstop here. "

The moral of this fable is that you must wear your neckerchief withoutthinking too much about it. The ancient prophets called this world, even in their time, a valley of woe. Now, at that period, theOrientals had, with the permission of the constituted authorities, aswarm of comely slaves, besides their wives! What shall we call thevalley of the Seine between Calvary and Charenton, where the lawallows but one lawful wife. 

 THE UNIVERSAL AMADIS. 

You will understand at once that I began to gnaw the head of my cane, to consult the ceiling, to gaze at the fire, to examine Caroline'sfoot, and I thus held out till the marriageable young lady was gone. 

"You must excuse me, " I said, "if I have remained behind, perhaps inspite of you: but your vengeance would lose by being recounted by andby, and if it constituted a petty trouble for your husband, I have thegreatest interest in hearing it, and you shall know why. "

"Ah, " she returned, "that expression, '_it's altogether moral, _' whichhe gave as an excuse, shocked me to the last degree. It was a greatconsolation, truly, to me, to know that I held the place, in hishousehold, of a piece of furniture, a block; that my kingdom lay amongthe kitchen utensils, the accessories of my toilet, and thephysicians' prescriptions; that our conjugal love had been assimilatedto dinner pills, to veal soup and white mustard; that Madame deFischtaminel possessed my husband's soul, his admiration, and that shecharmed and satisfied his intellect, while I was a kind of purelyphysical necessity! What do you think of a woman's being degraded tothe situation of a soup or a plate of boiled beef, and withoutparsley, at that! Oh, I composed a catilinic, that evening--"

"Philippic is better. "

"Well, either. I'll say anything you like, for I was perfectlyfurious, and I don't remember what I screamed in the desert of mybedroom. Do you suppose that this opinion that husbands have of theirwives, the parts they give them, is not a singular vexation for us?Our petty troubles are always pregnant with greater ones. My Adolpheneeded a lesson. You know the Vicomte de Lustrac, a desperate amateurof women and music, an epicure, one of those ex-beaux of the Empire, who live upon their earlier successes, and who cultivate themselveswith excessive care, in order to secure a second crop?"

"Yes, " I said, "one of those laced, braced, corseted old fellows ofsixty, who work such wonders by the grace of their forms, and whomight give a lesson to the youngest dandies among us. "

"Monsieur de Lustrac is as selfish as a king, but gallant andpretentious, spite of his jet black wig. "

"As to his whiskers, he dyes them. "

"He goes to ten parties in an evening: he's a butterfly. "

"He gives capital dinners and concerts, and patronizes inexperiencedsongstresses. "

"He takes bustle for pleasure. "

"Yes, but he makes off with incredible celerity whenever a misfortuneoccurs. Are you in mourning, he avoids you. Are you confined, heawaits your churching before he visits you. He possesses a mundanefrankness and a social intrepidity which challenge admiration. "

"But does it not require courage to appear to be what one really is?"I asked. 

"Well, " she resumed, after we had exchanged our observations on thispoint, "this young old man, this universal Amadis, whom we call amongourselves Chevalier _Petit-Bon-Homme-vil-encore_, became the object ofmy admiration. I made him a few of those advances which nevercompromise a woman; I spoke of the good taste exhibited in his latestwaistcoats and in his canes, and he thought me a lady of extremeamiability. I thought him a chevalier of extreme youth; he called uponme; I put on a number of little airs, and pretended to be unhappy athome, and to have deep sorrows. You know what a woman means when shetalks of her sorrows, and complains that she is not understood. Theold ape replied much better than a young man would, and I had thegreatest difficulty in keeping a straight face while I listened tohim. 

"'Ah, that's the way with husbands, they pursue the very worst polity, they respect their wives, and, sooner or later, every woman is enragedat finding herself respected, and divines the secret education towhich she is entitled. Once married, you ought not to live like alittle school-girl, etc. '

"As he spoke, he leaned over me, he squirmed, he was horrible to see. He looked like a wooden Nuremberg doll, he stuck out his chin, hestuck out his chair, he stuck out his hand--in short, after a varietyof marches and countermarches, of declarations that were perfectlyangelic--"

"No!"

"Yes. _Petit-Bon-Homme-vil-encore_ had abandoned the classicism of hisyouth for the romanticism now in fashion: he spoke of the soul, ofangels, of adoration, of submission, he became ethereal, and of thedarkest blue. He took me to the opera, and handed me to my carriage. This old young man went when I went, his waistcoats multiplied, hecompressed his waist, he excited his horse to a gallop in order tocatch and accompany my carriage to the promenade: he compromised mewith the grace of a young collegian, and was considered madly in lovewith me. I was steadfastly cruel, but accepted his arm and hisbouquets. We were talked about. I was delighted, and managed beforelong to be surprised by my husband, with the viscount on the sofa inmy boudoir, holding my hands in his, while I listened in a sort ofexternal ecstasy. It is incredible how much a desire for vengeancewill induce us to put up with! I appeared vexed at the entrance of myhusband, who made a scene on the viscount's departure: 'I assure you, sir, ' said I, after having listened to his reproaches, 'that _it'saltogether moral_. ' My husband saw the point and went no more toMadame de Fischtaminel's. I received Monsieur de Lustrac no more, either. "

"But, " I interrupted, "this Lustrac that you, like many others, takefor a bachelor, is a widower, and childless. "

"Really!"

"No man ever buried his wife deeper than he buried his: she willhardly be found at the day of judgment. He married before theRevolution, and your _altogether moral_ reminds me of a speech of histhat I shall have to repeat for your benefit. Napoleon appointedLustrac to an important office, in a conquered province. Madame deLustrac, abandoned for governmental duties, took a private secretaryfor her private affairs, though it was altogether moral: but she waswrong in selecting him without informing her husband. Lustrac met thissecretary in a state of some excitement, in consequence of a livelydiscussion in his wife's chamber, and at an exceedingly early hour inthe morning. The city desired nothing better than to laugh at itsgovernor, and this adventure made such a sensation that Lustrachimself begged the Emperor to recall him. Napoleon desired hisrepresentatives to be men of morality, and he held that such disastersas this must inevitably take from a man's consideration. You know thatamong the Emperor's unhappy passions, was that of reforming his courtand his government. Lustrac's request was granted, therefore, butwithout compensation. When he returned to Paris, he reappeared at hismansion, with his wife; he took her into society--a step which iscertainly conformable to the most refined habits of the aristocracy--but then there are always people who want to find out about it. They inquired the reason of this chivalrous championship. 'So you arereconciled, you and Madame de Lustrac, ' some one said to him in thelobby of the Emperor's theatre, 'you have pardoned her, have you? Somuch the better. ' 'Oh, ' replied he, with a satisfied air, 'I becameconvinced--' 'Ah, that she was innocent, very good. ' 'No, I becameconvinced that it was altogether physical. '"

Caroline smiled. 

"The opinion of your admirer reduced this weighty trouble to what is, in this case as in yours, a very petty one. "

"A petty trouble!" she exclaimed, "and pray for what do you take thefatigue of coquetting with a de Lustrac, of whom I have made an enemy!Ah, women often pay dearly enough for the bouquets they receive andthe attentions they accept. Monsieur de Lustrac said of me to Monsieurde Bourgarel, 'I would not advise you to pay court to that woman; sheis too dear. '"

 WITHOUT AN OCCUPATION. 

"PARIS, 183-

"You ask me, dear mother, whether I am happy with my husband. Certainly Monsieur de Fischtaminel was not the ideal of my dreams. Isubmitted to your will, as you know. His fortune, that supremeconsideration, spoke, indeed, sufficiently loud. With these arguments, --a marriage, without stooping, with the Count de Fischtaminel, hishaving thirty thousand a year, and a home at Paris--you were stronglyarmed against your poor daughter. Besides, Monsieur de Fischtaminel isgood looking for a man of thirty-six years; he received the cross ofthe Legion of Honor from Napoleon upon the field of battle, he is anex-colonel, and had it not been for the Restoration, which put himupon half-pay, he would be a general. These are certainly extenuatingcircumstances. 

"Many women consider that I have made a good match, and I am bound toconfess that there is every appearance of happiness, --for the public, that is. But you will acknowledge that if you had known of the returnof my Uncle Cyrus and of his intention to leave me his money, youwould have given me the privilege of choosing for myself. 

"I have nothing to say against Monsieur de Fischtaminel: he does notgamble, he is indifferent to women, he doesn't like wine, and he hasno expensive fancies: he possesses, as you said, all the negativequalities which make husbands passable. Then, what is the matter withhim? Well, mother, he has nothing to do. We are together the wholeblessed day! Would you believe that it is during the night, when weare the most closely united, that I am the most alone? His sleep is myasylum, my liberty begins when he slumbers. This state of siege willyet make me sick: I am never alone. If Monsieur de Fischtaminel werejealous, I should have a resource. There would then be a struggle, acomedy: but how could the aconite of jealousy have taken root in hissoul? He has never left me since our marriage. He feels no shame instretching himself out upon a sofa and remaining there for hourstogether. 

"Two felons pinioned to the same chain do not find time hang heavy:for they have their escape to think of. But we have no subject ofconversation; we have long since talked ourselves out. A little whileago he was so far reduced as to talk politics. But even politics areexhausted, Napoleon, unfortunately for me, having died at St. Helena, as is well known. 

"Monsieur de Fischtaminel abhors reading. If he sees me with a book, he comes and says a dozen times an hour--'Nina, dear, haven't youfinished yet?'

"I endeavored to persuade this innocent persecutor to ride out everyday on horseback, and I alleged a consideration usually conclusivewith men of forty years, --his health! But he said that after havingbeen twelve years on horseback, he felt the need of repose. 

"My husband, dear mother, is a man who absorbs you, he uses up thevital fluid of his neighbor, his ennui is gluttonous: he likes to beamused by those who call upon us, and, after five years of wedlock, noone ever comes: none visit us but those whose intentions are evidentlydishonorable for him, and who endeavor, unsuccessfully, to amuse him, in order to earn the right to weary his wife. 

"Monsieur de Fischtaminel, mother, opens the door of my chamber, or ofthe room to which I have flown for refuge, five or six times an hour, and comes up to me in an excited way, and says, 'Well, what are youdoing, my belle?' (the expression in fashion during the Empire)without perceiving that he is constantly repeating the same phrase, which is to me like the one pint too much that the executionerformerly poured into the torture by water. 

"Then there's another bore! We can't go to walk any more. A promenadewithout conversation, without interest, is impossible. My husbandwalks with me for the walk, as if he were alone. I have the fatiguewithout the pleasure. 

"The interval between getting up and breakfast is employed in mytoilet, in my household duties; and I manage to get through with thispart of the day. But between breakfast and dinner, there is a wholedesert to plough, a waste to traverse. My husband's want of occupationdoes not leave me a moment of repose, he overpowers me by hisuselessness; his idle life positively wears me out. His two eyesalways open and gazing at mine compel me to keep them lowered. Thenhis monotonous remarks:

"'What o'clock is it, love? What are you doing now? What are youthinking of? What do you mean to do? Where shall we go this evening?Anything new? What weather! I don't feel well, etc. , etc. '

"All these variations upon the same theme--the interrogation point--which compose Fischtaminel's repertory, will drive me mad. Add tothese leaden arrows everlastingly shot off at me, one last trait whichwill complete the description of my happiness, and you will understandmy life. 

"Monsieur de Fischtaminel, who went away in 1809, with the rank ofsub-lieutenant, at the age of eighteen, has had no other educationthan that due to discipline, to the natural sense of honor of a nobleand a soldier: but though he possesses tact, the sentiment of probity, and a proper subordination, his ignorance is gross, he knowsabsolutely nothing, and he has a horror of learning anything. Oh, dearmother, what an accomplished door-keeper this colonel would have made, had he been born in indigence! I don't think a bit the better of himfor his bravery, for he did not fight against the Russians, theAustrians, or the Prussians: he fought against ennui. When he rushedupon the enemy, Captain Fischtaminel's purpose was to get away fromhimself. He married because he had nothing else to do. 

"We have another slight difficulty to content with: my husbandharasses the servants to such a degree that we change them every sixmonths. 

"I so ardently desire, dear mother, to remain a virtuous woman, that Iam going to try the effect of traveling for half the year. During thewinter, I shall go every evening to the Italian or the French opera, or to parties: but I don't know whether our fortune will permit suchan expenditure. Uncle Cyrus ought to come to Paris--I would take careof him as I would of an inheritance. 

"If you discover a cure for my woes, let your daughter know of it--your daughter who loves you as much as she deplores her misfortunes, and who would have been glad to call herself by some other name thanthat of

 "NINA FISCHTAMINEL. "

Besides the necessity of describing this petty trouble, which couldonly be described by the pen of a woman, --and what a woman she was!--it was necessary to make you acquainted with a character whom yousaw only in profile in the first half of this book, the queen of theparticular set in which Caroline lived, --a woman both envied andadroit, who succeeded in conciliating, at an early date, what she owedto the world with the requirements of the heart. This letter is herabsolution. 

 INDISCRETIONS. 

Women are either chaste--or vain--or simply proud. They are thereforeall subject to the following petty trouble:

Certain husbands are so delighted to have, in the form of a wife, awoman to themselves, --a possession exclusively due to the legalceremony, --that they dread the public's making a mistake, and theyhasten to brand their consort, as lumber-dealers brand their logswhile floating down stream, or as the Berry stock-raisers brand theirsheep. They bestow names of endearment, right before people, upontheir wives: names taken, after the Roman fashion (columbella), fromthe animal kingdom, as: my chick, my duck, my dove, my lamb; or, choosing from the vegetable kingdom, they call them: my cabbage, myfig (this only in Provence), my plum (this only in Alsatia). Never:--My flower! Pray note this discretion. 

Or else, which is more serious, they call their wives:--Bobonne, --mother, --daughter, --good woman, --old lady: this last when she isvery young. 

Some venture upon names of doubtful propriety, such as: Mon bichon, maniniche, Tronquette!

We once heard one of our politicians, a man extremely remarkable forhis ugliness, call his wife, _Moumoutte_!

"I would rather he would strike me, " said this unfortunate to herneighbor. 

"Poor little woman, she is really unhappy, " resumed the neighbor, looking at me when Moumoutte had gone: "when she is in company withher husband she is upon pins and needles, and keeps out of his way. One evening, he actually seized her by the neck and said: 'Come fatty, let's go home!'"

It has been alleged that the cause of a very famous husband-poisoningwith arsenic, was nothing less than a series of constant indiscretionslike these that the wife had to bear in society. This husband used togive the woman he had won at the point of the Code, public little tapson her shoulder, he would startle her by a resounding kiss, hedishonored her by a conspicuous tenderness, seasoned by thoseimpertinent attentions the secret of which belongs to the Frenchsavages who dwell in the depths of the provinces, and whose mannersare very little known, despite the efforts of the realists in fiction. It was, it is said, this shocking situation, --one perfectlyappreciated by a discerning jury, --which won the prisoner a verdictsoftened by the extenuating circumstances. 

The jurymen said to themselves:

"For a wife to murder her husband for these conjugal offences, iscertainly going rather far; but then a woman is very excusable, whenshe is so harassed!"

We deeply regret, in the interest of elegant manners, that thesearguments are not more generally known. Heaven grant, therefore, thatour book may have an immense success, as women will obtain thisadvantage from it, that they will be treated as they deserve, that is, as queens. 

In this respect, love is much superior to marriage, it is proud ofindiscreet sayings and doings. There are some women that seek them, fish for them, and woe to the man who does not now and then commitone!

What passion lies in an accidental _thou_!

Out in the country I heard a husband call his wife: "Ma berline!" Shewas delighted with it, and saw nothing ridiculous in it: she calledher husband, "Mon fiston!" This delicious couple were ignorant of theexistence of such things as petty troubles. 

It was in observing this happy pair that the author discovered thisaxiom:

Axiom:--In order to be happy in wedlock, you must either be a man ofgenius married to an affectionate and intellectual woman, or, by achance which is not as common as might be supposed, you must both ofyou be exceedingly stupid. 

The too celebrated history of the cure of a wounded self-love byarsenic, proves that, properly speaking, there are no petty troublesfor women in married life. 

Axiom. --Woman exists by sentiment where man exists by action. 

Now, sentiment can at any moment render a petty trouble either a greatmisfortune, or a wasted life, or an eternal misery. Should Carolinebegin, in her ignorance of life and the world, by inflicting upon herhusband the vexations of her stupidity (re-read REVELATIONS), Adolphe, like any other man, may find a compensation in social excitement: hegoes out, comes back, goes here and there, has business. But forCaroline, the question everywhere is, To love or not to love, to be ornot to be loved. 

Indiscretions are in harmony with the character of the individuals, with times and places. Two examples will suffice. 

Here is the first. A man is by nature dirty and ugly: he is ill-madeand repulsive. There are men, and often rich ones, too, who, by a sortof unobserved constitution, soil a new suit of clothes in twenty-fourhours. They were born disgusting. It is so disgraceful for a women tobe anything more than just simply a wife to this sort of Adolphe, thata certain Caroline had long ago insisted upon the suppression of themodern _thee_ and _thou_ and all other insignia of the wifely dignity. Society had been for five or six years accustomed to this sort ofthing, and supposed Madame and Monsieur completely separated, and allthe more so as it had noticed the accession of a Ferdinand II. 

One evening, in the presence of a dozen persons, this man said to hiswife: "Caroline, hand me the tongs, there's a love. " It is nothing, and yet everything. It was a domestic revelation. 

Monsieur de Lustrac, the Universal Amadis, hurried to Madame deFischtaminel's, narrated this little scene with all the spirit at hiscommand, and Madame de Fischtaminel put on an air something likeCelimene's and said: "Poor creature, what an extremity she must bein!"

I say nothing of Caroline's confusion, --you have already divined it. 

Here is the second. Think of the frightful situation in which a ladyof great refinement was lately placed: she was conversing agreeably ather country seat near Paris, when her husband's servant came andwhispered in her ear, "Monsieur has come, madame. "

"Very well, Benoit. "

Everybody had heard the rumblings of the vehicle. It was known thatthe husband had been at Paris since Monday, and this took place onSaturday, at four in the afternoon. 

"He's got something important to say to you, madame. "

Though this dialogue was held in a whisper, it was perfectlyunderstood, and all the more so from the fact that the lady of thehouse turned from the pale hue of the Bengal rose to the brilliantcrimson of the wheatfield poppy. She nodded and went on with theconversation, and managed to leave her company on the pretext oflearning whether her husband had succeeded in an important undertakingor not: but she seemed plainly vexed at Adolphe's want ofconsideration for the company who were visiting her. 

During their youth, women want to be treated as divinities, they lovethe ideal; they cannot bear the idea of being what nature intendedthem to be. 

Some husbands, on retiring to the country, after a week in town, areworse than this: they bow to the company, put their arm round theirwife's waist, take a little walk with her, appear to be talkingconfidentially, disappear in a clump of trees, get lost, and reappearhalf an hour afterward. 

This, ladies, is a genuine petty trouble for a young woman, but for awoman beyond forty, this sort of indiscretion is so delightful, thatthe greatest prudes are flattered by it, for, be it known:

That women of a certain age, women on the shady side, want to betreated as mortals, they love the actual; they cannot bear the idea ofno longer being what nature intended them to be. 

Axiom. --Modesty is a relative virtue; there is the modesty of thewoman of twenty, the woman of thirty, the woman of forty-five. 

Thus the author said to a lady who told him to guess at her age:"Madame, yours is the age of indiscretion. "

This charming woman of thirty-nine was making a Ferdinand much tooconspicuous, while her daughter was trying to conceal her Ferdinand I. 

 BRUTAL DISCLOSURES. 

FIRST STYLE. Caroline adores Adolphe, she thinks him handsome, shethinks him superb, especially in his National Guard uniform. Shestarts when a sentinel presents arms to him, she considers him mouldedlike a model, she regards him as a man of wit, everything he does isright, nobody has better taste than he, in short, she is crazy aboutAdolphe. 

It's the old story of Cupid's bandage. This is washed every ten years, and newly embroidered by the altered manners of the period, but it hasbeen the same old bandage since the days of Greece. 

Caroline is at a ball with one of her young friends. A man well knownfor his bluntness, whose acquaintance she is to make later in life, but whom she now sees for the first time, Monsieur Foullepointe, hascommenced a conversation with Caroline's friend. According to thecustom of society, Caroline listens to this conversation withoutmingling in it. 

"Pray tell me, madame, " says Monsieur Foullepointe, "who is that queerman who has been talking about the Court of Assizes before a gentlemanwhose acquittal lately created such a sensation: he is all the whileblundering, like an ox in a bog, against everybody's sore spot. A ladyburst into tears at hearing him tell of the death of a child, as shelost her own two months ago. "

"Who do you mean?"

"Why, that fat man, dressed like a waiter in a cafe, frizzled like abarber's apprentice, there, he's trying now to make himself agreeableto Madame de Fischtaminel. "

"Hush, " whispers the lady quite alarmed, "it's the husband of thelittle woman next to me!"

"Ah, it's your husband?" says Monsieur Foullepointe. "I am delighted, madame, he's a charming man, so vivacious, gay and witty. I am goingto make his acquaintance immediately. "

And Foullepointe executes his retreat, leaving a bitter suspicion inCaroline's soul, as to the question whether her husband is really ashandsome as she thinks him. 

SECOND STYLE. Caroline, annoyed by the reputation of Madame Schinner, who is credited with the possession of epistolary talents, and styledthe "Sevigne of the note", tired of hearing about Madame deFischtaminel, who has ventured to write a little 32mo book on theeducation of the young, in which she has boldly reprinted Fenelon, without the style:--Caroline has been working for six months upon atale tenfold poorer than those of Berquin, nauseatingly moral, andflamboyant in style. 

After numerous intrigues such as women are skillful in managing in theinterest of their vanity, and the tenacity and perfection of whichwould lead you to believe that they have a third sex in their head, this tale, entitled "The Lotus, " appears in three installments in aleading daily paper. It is signed Samuel Crux. 

When Adolphe takes up the paper at breakfast, Caroline's heart beatsup in her very throat: she blushes, turns pale, looks away and staresat the ceiling. When Adolphe's eyes settle upon the feuilleton, shecan bear it no longer: she gets up, goes out, comes back, havingreplenished her stock of audacity, no one knows where. 

"Is there a feuilleton this morning?" she asks with an air that shethinks indifferent, but which would disturb a husband still jealous ofhis wife. 

"Yes, one by a beginner, Samuel Crux. The name is a disguise, clearly:the tale is insignificant enough to drive an insect to despair, if hecould read: and vulgar, too: the style is muddy, but then it's--"

Caroline breathes again. "It's--" she suggests. 

"It's incomprehensible, " resumes Adolphe. "Somebody must have paidChodoreille five or six hundred francs to insert it; or else it's theproduction of a blue-stocking in high society who has promised toinvite Madame Chodoreille to her house; or perhaps it's the work of awoman in whom the editor is personally interested. Such a piece ofstupidity cannot be explained any other way. Imagine, Caroline, thatit's all about a little flower picked on the edge of a wood in asentimental walk, which a gentleman of the Werther school has sworn tokeep, which he has had framed, and which the lady claims again elevenyears after (the poor man has had time to change his lodgings threetimes). It's quite new, about as old as Sterne or Gessner. What makesme think it's a woman, is that the first literary idea of the wholesex is to take vengeance on some one. "

Adolphe might go on pulling "The Lotus" to pieces; Caroline's ears arefull of the tinkling of bells. She is like the woman who threw herselfover the Pont des Arts, and tried to find her way ten feet below thelevel of the Seine. 

ANOTHER STYLE. Caroline, in her paroxysms of jealousy, has discovereda hiding place used by Adolphe, who, as he can't trust his wife, andas he knows she opens his letters and rummages in his drawers, hasendeavored to save his correspondence with Hector from the hookedfingers of the conjugal police. 

Hector is an old schoolmate, who has married in the Loire Inferieure. 

Adolphe lifts up the cloth of his writing desk, a cloth the border ofwhich has been embroidered by Caroline, the ground being blue, blackor red velvet, --the color, as you see, is perfectly immaterial, --andhe slips his unfinished letters to Madame de Fischtaminel, to hisfriend Hector, between the table and the cloth. 

The thickness of a sheet of paper is almost nothing, velvet is adowny, discreet material, but, no matter, these precautions are invain. The male devil is fairly matched by the female devil: Tophetwill furnish them of all genders. Caroline has Mephistopheles on herside, the demon who causes tables to spurt forth fire, and who, withhis ironic finger points out the hiding place of keys--the secret ofsecrets. 

Caroline has noticed the thickness of a letter sheet between thisvelvet and this table: she hits upon a letter to Hector instead ofhitting upon one to Madame de Fischtaminel, who has gone to PlombieresSprings, and reads the following:

"My dear Hector:

"I pity you, but you have acted wisely in entrusting me with aknowledge of the difficulties in which you have voluntarily involvedyourself. You never would see the difference between the country womanand the woman of Paris. In the country, my dear boy, you are alwaysface to face with your wife, and, owing to the ennui which impels you, you rush headforemost into the enjoyment of your bliss. This is agreat error: happiness is an abyss, and when you have once reached thebottom, you never get back again, in wedlock. 

"I will show you why. Let me take, for your wife's sake, the shortestpath--the parable. 

"I remember having made a journey from Paris to Ville-Parisis, in thatvehicle called a 'bus: distance, twenty miles: 'bus, lumbering: horse, lame. Nothing amuses me more than to draw from people, by the aid ofthat gimlet called the interrogation, and to obtain, by means of anattentive air, the sum of information, anecdotes and learning thateverybody is anxious to part with: and all men have such a sum, thepeasant as well as the banker, the corporal as well as the marshal ofFrance. 

"I have often noticed how ready these casks, overflowing with wit, areto open their sluices while being transported by diligence or 'bus, orby any vehicle drawn by horses, for nobody talks in a railway car. 

"At the rate of our exit from Paris, the journey would take full sevenhours: so I got an old corporal to talk, for my diversion. He couldneither read nor write: he was entirely illiterate. Yet the journeyseemed short. The corporal had been through all the campaigns, he toldme of things perfectly unheard of, that historians never troublethemselves about. 

"Ah! Hector, how superior is practice to theory! Among other things, and in reply to a question relative to the infantry, whose courage ismuch more tried by marching than by fighting, he said this, which Igive you free from circumlocution:

"'Sir, when Parisians were brought to our 45th, which Napoleon calledThe Terrible (I am speaking of the early days of the Empire, when theinfantry had legs of steel, and when they needed them), I had a way oftelling beforehand which of them would remain in the 45th. Theymarched without hurrying, they did their little six leagues a day, neither more nor less, and they pitched camp in condition to beginagain on the morrow. The plucky fellows who did ten leagues and wantedto run to the victory, stopped half way at the hospital. '

"The worthy corporal was talking of marriage while he thought he wastalking of war, and you have stopped half way, Hector, at thehospital. 

"Remember the sympathetic condolence of Madame de Sevigne counting outthree hundred thousand francs to Monsieur de Grignan, to induce him tomarry one of the prettiest girls in France! 'Why, ' said she toherself, 'he will have to marry her every day, as long as she lives!Decidedly, I don't think three hundred francs too much. ' Is it notenough to make the bravest tremble?

"My dear fellow, conjugal happiness is founded, like that of nations, upon ignorance. It is a felicity full of negative conditions. 

"If I am happy with my little Caroline, it is due to the strictestobservance of that salutary principle so strongly insisted upon in the_Physiology of Marriage_. I have resolved to lead my wife throughpaths beaten in the snow, until the happy day when infidelity will bedifficult. 

"In the situation in which you have placed yourself, and whichresembles that of Duprez, who, on his first appearance at Paris, wentto singing with all the voice his lungs would yield, instead ofimitating Nourrit, who gave the audience just enough to enchant them, the following, I think, is your proper course to--"

The letter broke off here: Caroline returned it to its place, at thesame time wondering how she would make her dear Adolphe expiate hisobedience to the execrable precepts of the _Physiology of Marriage_. 

 A TRUCE. 

This trouble doubtless occurs sufficiently often and in different waysenough in the existence of married women, for this personal incidentto become the type of the genus. 

The Caroline in question here is very pious, she loves her husbandvery much, her husband asserts that she loves him too much, even: butthis is a piece of marital conceit, if, indeed, it is not aprovocation, as he only complains to his wife's young lady friends. 

When a person's conscience is involved, the least thing becomesexceedingly serious. Madame de ----- has told her young friend, Madamede Fischtaminel, that she had been compelled to make an extraordinaryconfession to her spiritual director, and to perform penance, thedirector having decided that she was in a state of mortal sin. Thislady, who goes to mass every morning, is a woman of thirty-six years, thin and slightly pimpled. She has large soft black eyes, her upperlip is strongly shaded: still her voice is sweet, her manners gentle, her gait noble--she is a woman of quality. 

Madame de Fischtaminel, whom Madame de ----- has made her friend(nearly all pious women patronize a woman who is considered worldly, on the pretext of converting her), --Madame de Fischtaminel assertsthat these qualities, in this Caroline of the Pious Sort, are avictory of religion over a rather violent natural temper. 

These details are necessary to describe the trouble in all its horror. 

This lady's Adolphe had been compelled to leave his wife for twomonths, in April, immediately after the forty days' fast that Carolinescrupulously observes. Early in June, therefore, madame expected herhusband, she expected him day by day. From one hope to another, "Conceived every morn and deferred every eve. "

She got along as far as Sunday, the day when her presentiments, whichhad now reached a state of paroxysm, told her that the longed-forhusband would arrive at an early hour. 

When a pious woman expects her husband, and that husband has beenabsent from home nearly four months, she takes much more pains withher toilet than a young girl does, though waiting for her firstbetrothed. 

This virtuous Caroline was so completely absorbed in exclusivelypersonal preparations, that she forgot to go to eight o'clock mass. She proposed to hear a low mass, but she was afraid of losing thedelight of her dear Adolphe's first glance, in case he arrived atearly dawn. Her chambermaid--who respectfully left her mistress alonein the dressing-room where pious and pimpled ladies let no one enter, not even their husbands, especially if they are thin--her chambermaidheard her exclaim several times, "If it's your master, let me know!"

The rumbling of a vehicle having made the furniture rattle, Carolineassumed a mild tone to conceal the violence of her legitimateemotions. 

"Oh! 'tis he! Run, Justine: tell him I am waiting for him here. "Caroline trembled so that she dropped into an arm-chair. 

The vehicle was a butcher's wagon. 

It was in anxieties like this that the eight o'clock mass slipped by, like an eel in his slime. Madame's toilet operations were resumed, forshe was engaged in dressing. The chambermaid's nose had already beenthe recipient of a superb muslin chemise, with a simple hem, whichCaroline had thrown at her from the dressing-room, though she hadgiven her the same kind for the last three months. 

"What are you thinking of, Justine? I told you to choose from thechemises that are not numbered. "

The unnumbered chemises were only seven or eight, in the mostmagnificent trousseau. They are chemises gotten up and embroideredwith the greatest care: a woman must be a queen, a young queen, tohave a dozen. Each one of Caroline's was trimmed with valenciennesround the bottom, and still more coquettishly garnished about theneck. This feature of our manners will perhaps serve to suggest asuspicion, in the masculine world, of the domestic drama revealed bythis exceptional chemise. 

Caroline had put on a pair of Scotch thread stockings, little prunellabuskins, and her most deceptive corsets. She had her hair dressed inthe fashion that most became her, and embellished it with a cap of themost elegant form. It is unnecessary to speak of her morning gown. Apious lady who lives at Paris and who loves her husband, knows as wellas a coquette how to choose those pretty little striped patterns, havethem cut with an open waist, and fastened by loops to buttons in a waywhich compels her to refasten them two or three times in an hour, withlittle airs more or less charming, as the case may be. 

The nine o'clock mass, the ten o'clock mass, every mass, went by inthese preparations, which, for women in love, are one of their twelvelabors of Hercules. 

Pious women rarely go to church in a carriage, and they are right. Except in the case of a pouring shower, or intolerably bad weather, aperson ought not to appear haughty in the place where it is becomingto be humble. Caroline was afraid to compromise the freshness of herdress and the purity of her thread stockings. Alas! these pretextsconcealed a reason. 

"If I am at church when Adolphe comes, I shall lose the pleasure ofhis first glance: and he will think I prefer high mass to him. "

She made this sacrifice to her husband in a desire to please him--afearfully worldly consideration. Prefer the creature to the Creator! Ahusband to heaven! Go and hear a sermon and you will learn what suchan offence will cost you. 

"After all, " says Caroline, quoting her confessor, "society is foundedupon marriage, which the Church has included among its sacraments. "

And this is the way in which religious instruction may be put aside infavor of a blind though legitimate love. Madame refused breakfast, andordered the meal to be kept hot, just as she kept herself ready, at amoment's notice, to welcome the precious absentee. 

Now these little things may easily excite a laugh: but in the firstplace they are continually occurring with couples who love each other, or where one of them loves the other: besides, in a woman sostrait-laced, so reserved, so worthy, as this lady, theseacknowledgments of affection went beyond the limits imposed upon herfeelings by the lofty self-respect which true piety induces. WhenMadame de Fischtaminel narrated this little scene in a devotee's life, dressing it up with choice by-play, acted out as ladies of the worldknow how to act out their anecdotes, I took the liberty of saying thatit was the Canticle of canticles in action. 

"If her husband doesn't come, " said Justine to the cook, "what willbecome of us? She has already thrown her chemise in my face. "

At last, Caroline heard the crack of a postilion's whip, thewell-known rumbling of a traveling carriage, the racket made by thehoofs of post-horses, and the jingling of their bells! Oh, she coulddoubt no longer, the bells made her burst forth, as thus:

"The door! Open the door! 'Tis he, my husband! Will you never go tothe door!" And the pious woman stamped her foot and broke thebell-rope. 

"Why, madame, " said Justine, with the vivacity of a servant doing herduty, "it's some people going away. "

"Upon my word, " replied Caroline, half ashamed, to herself, "I willnever let Adolphe go traveling again without me. "

A Marseilles poet--it is not known whether it was Mery or Barthelemy--acknowledged that if his best fried did not arrive punctually at thedinner hour, he waited patiently five minutes: at the tenth minute, hefelt a desire to throw the napkin in his face: at the twelfth he hopedsome great calamity would befall him: at the fifteenth, he would notbe able to restrain himself from stabbing him several times with adirk. 

All women, when expecting somebody, are Marseilles poets, if, indeed, we may compare the vulgar throes of hunger to the sublime Canticle ofcanticles of a pious wife, who is hoping for the joys of a husband'sfirst glance after a three months' absence. Let all those who love andwho have met again after an absence ten thousand times accursed, begood enough to recall their first glance: it says so many things thatthe lovers, if in the presence of a third party, are fain to lowertheir eyes! This poem, in which every man is as great as Homer, inwhich he seems a god to the woman who loves him, is, for a pious, thinand pimpled lady, all the more immense, from the fact that she hasnot, like Madame de Fischtaminel, the resource of having severalcopies of it. In her case, her husband is all she's got!

So you will not be surprised to learn that Caroline missed every massand had no breakfast. This hunger and thirst for Adolphe gave her aviolent cramp in the stomach. She did not think of religion onceduring the hours of mass, nor during those of vespers. She was notcomfortable when she sat, and she was very uncomfortable when shestood: Justine advised her to go to bed. Caroline, quite overcome, retired at about half past five in the evening, after having taken alight soup: but she ordered a dainty supper at ten. 

"I shall doubtless sup with my husband, " she said. 

This speech was the conclusion of dreadful catalinics, internallyfulminated. She had reached the Marseilles poet's several stabs with adirk. So she spoke in a tone that was really terrible. At three in themorning Caroline was in a profound sleep: Adolphe arrived without herhearing either carriage, or horse, or bell, or opening door!

Adolphe, who would not permit her to be disturbed, went to bed in thespare room. When Caroline heard of his return in the morning, twotears issued from her eyes; she rushed to the spare room without theslightest preparatory toilet; a hideous attendant, posted on thethreshold, informed her that her husband, having traveled two hundredleagues and been two nights without sleep, requested that he might notbe awakened: he was exceedingly tired. 

Caroline--pious woman that she was--opened the door violently withoutbeing able to wake the only husband that heaven had given her, andthen hastened to church to listen to a thanksgiving mass. 

As she was visibly snappish for three whole days, Justine remarked, inreply to an unjust reproach, and with a chambermaid's finesse:

"Why, madame, your husband's got back!"

"He has only got back to Paris, " returned the pious Caroline. 

 USELESS CARE. 

Put yourself in the place of a poor woman of doubtful beauty, who owesher husband to the weight of her dowry, who gives herself infinitepains, and spends a great deal of money to appear to advantage andfollow the fashions, who does her best to keep house sumptuously andyet economically--a house, too, not easy to manage--who, from moralityand dire necessity, perhaps, loves no one but her husband, who has noother study but the happiness of this precious husband, who, toexpress all in one word, joins the maternal sentiment _to thesentiment of her duties_. This underlined circumlocution is theparaphrase of the word love in the language of prudes. 

Have you put yourself in her place? Well, this too-much-loved husbandby chance remarked at his friend Monsieur de Fischtaminel's, that hewas very fond of mushrooms _a l'Italienne_. 

If you have paid some attention to the female nature, in its good, great, and grand manifestations, you know that for a loving wife thereis no greater pleasure than that of seeing the beloved one absorbinghis favorite viands. This springs from the fundamental idea upon whichthe affection of women is based: that of being the source of all hispleasures, big and little. Love animates everything in life, andconjugal love has a peculiar right to descend to the most trivialdetails. 

Caroline spends two or three days in inquiries before she learns howthe Italians dress mushrooms. She discovers a Corsican abbe who tellsher that at Biffi's, in the rue de Richelieu, she will not only learnhow the Italians dress mushrooms, but that she will be able to obtainsome Milanese mushrooms. Our pious Caroline thanks the Abbe Serpolini, and resolves to send him a breviary in acknowledgment. 

Caroline's cook goes to Biffi's, comes back from Biffi's, and exhibitsto the countess a quantity of mushrooms as big as the coachman's ears. 

"Very good, " she says, "did he explain to you how to cook them?"

"Oh, for us cooks, them's a mere nothing, " replies the cook. 

As a general rule, cooks know everything, in the cooking way, excepthow a cook may feather his nest. 

At evening, during the second course, all Caroline's fibres quiverwith pleasure at observing the servant bringing to the table a certainsuggestive dish. She has positively waited for this dinner as she hadwaited for her husband. 

But between waiting with certainty and expecting a positive pleasure, there is, to the souls of the elect--and everybody will include awoman who adores her husband among the elect--there is, between thesetwo worlds of expectation, the difference that exists between a finenight and a fine day. 

The dish is presented to the beloved Adolphe, he carelessly plungeshis spoon in and helps himself, without perceiving Caroline's extremeemotion, to several of those soft, fat, round things, that travelerswho visit Milan do not for a long time recognize; they take them forsome kind of shell-fish. 

"Well, Adolphe?"

"Well, dear. "

"Don't you recognize them?"

"Recognize what?"

"Your mushrooms _a l'Italienne_?"

"These mushrooms! I thought they were--well, yes, they _are_mushrooms!"

"Yes, and _a l'Italienne_, too. "

"Pooh, they are old preserved mushrooms, _a la milanaise_. I abominatethem!"

"What kind is it you like, then?"

"_Fungi trifolati_. "

Let us observe--to the disgrace of an epoch which numbers and labelseverything, which puts the whole creation in bottles, which is at thismoment classifying one hundred and fifty thousand species of insects, giving them all the termination _us_, so that a _Silbermanus_ is thesame individual in all countries for the learned men who dissect abutterfly's legs with pincers--that we still want a nomenclature forthe chemistry of the kitchen, to enable all the cooks in the world toproduce precisely similar dishes. It would be diplomatically agreedthat French should be the language of the kitchen, as Latin has beenadopted by the scientific for botany and entomology, unless it weredesired to imitate them in that, too, and thus really have kitchenLatin. 

"My dear, " resumes Adolphe, on seeing the clouded and lengthened faceof his chaste Caroline, "in France the dish in question is calledMushrooms _a l'Italienne, a la provencale, a la bordelaise_. Themushrooms are minced, fried in oil with a few ingredients whose namesI have forgotten. You add a taste of garlic, I believe--"

Talk about calamities, of petty troubles! This, do you see, is, to awoman's heart, what the pain of an extracted tooth is to a child ofeight. _Ab uno disce omnes_: which means, "There's one of them: findthe rest in your memory. " For we have taken this culinary descriptionas a prototype of the vexations which afflict loving but indifferentlyloved women. 

 SMOKE WITHOUT FIRE. 

A woman full of faith in the man she loves is a romancer's fancy. Thisfeminine personage no more exists than does a rich dowry. A woman'sconfidence glows perhaps for a few moments, at the dawn of love, anddisappears in a trice like a shooting star. 

With women who are neither Dutch, nor English, nor Belgian, nor fromany marshy country, love is a pretext for suffering, an employment forthe superabundant powers of their imaginations and their nerves. 

Thus the second idea that takes possession of a happy woman, one whois really loved, is the fear of losing her happiness, for we must doher the justice to say that her first idea is to enjoy it. All whopossess treasures are in dread of thieves, but they do not, likewomen, lend wings and feet to their golden stores. 

The little blue flower of perfect felicity is not so common, that theheaven-blessed man who possesses it, should be simpleton enough toabandon it. 

Axiom. --A woman is never deserted without a reason. 

This axiom is written in the heart of hearts of every woman. Hence therage of a woman deserted. 

Let us not infringe upon the petty troubles of love: we live in acalculating epoch when women are seldom abandoned, do what they may:for, of all wives or women, nowadays, the legitimate is the leastexpensive. Now, every woman who is loved, has gone through the pettyannoyance of suspicion. This suspicion, whether just or unjust, engenders a multitude of domestic troubles, and here is the biggest ofall. 

Caroline is one day led to notice that her cherished Adolphe leavesher rather too often upon a matter of business, that eternalChaumontel's affair, which never comes to an end. 

Axiom. --Every household has its Chaumontel's affair. (See TROUBLEWITHIN TROUBLE. )

In the first place, a woman no more believes in matters of businessthan publishers and managers do in the illness of actresses andauthors. The moment a beloved creature absents himself, though she hasrendered him even too happy, every woman straightway imagines that hehas hurried away to some easy conquest. In this respect, women endowmen with superhuman faculties. Fear magnifies everything, it dilatesthe eyes and the heart: it makes a woman mad. 

"Where is my husband going? What is my husband doing? Why has he leftme? Why did he not take me with him?"

These four questions are the four cardinal points of the compass ofsuspicion, and govern the stormy sea of soliloquies. From thesefrightful tempests which ravage a woman's heart springs an ignoble, unworthy resolution, one which every woman, the duchess as well as theshopkeeper's wife, the baroness as well as the stockbroker's lady, theangel as well as the shrew, the indifferent as well as the passionate, at once puts into execution. They imitate the government, every one ofthem; they resort to espionage. What the State has invented in thepublic interest, they consider legal, legitimate and permissible, inthe interest of their love. This fatal woman's curiosity reduces themto the necessity of having agents, and the agent of any woman who, inthis situation, has not lost her self-respect, --a situation in whichher jealousy will not permit her to respect anything: neither yourlittle boxes, nor your clothes, nor the drawers of your treasury, ofyour desk, of your table, of your bureau, nor your pocketbook withprivate compartments, nor your papers, nor your travelingdressing-case, nor your toilet articles (a woman discovers in this waythat her husband dyed his moustache when he was a bachelor), nor yourindia-rubber girdles--her agent, I say, the only one in whom a womantrusts, is her maid, for her maid understands her, excuses her, andapproves her. 

In the paroxysm of excited curiosity, passion and jealousy, a womanmakes no calculations, takes no observations. She simply wishes toknow the whole truth. 

And Justine is delighted: she sees her mistress compromising herselfwith her, and she espouses her passion, her dread, her fears and hersuspicions, with terrible friendship. Justine and Caroline holdcouncils and have secret interviews. All espionage involves suchrelationships. In this pass, a maid becomes the arbitress of the fateof the married couple. Example: Lord Byron. 

"Madame, " Justine one day observes, "monsieur really _does_ go out tosee a woman. "

Caroline turns pale. 

"But don't be alarmed, madame, it's an old woman. "

"Ah, Justine, to some men no women are old: men are inexplicable. "

"But, madame, it isn't a lady, it's a woman, quite a common woman. "

"Ah, Justine, Lord Byron loved a fish-wife at Venice, Madame deFischtaminel told me so. "

And Caroline bursts into tears. 

"I've been pumping Benoit. "

"What is Benoit's opinion?"

"Benoit thinks that the woman is a go-between, for monsieur keeps hissecret from everybody, even from Benoit. "

For a week Caroline lives the life of the damned; all her savings goto pay spies and to purchase reports. 

Finally, Justine goes to see the woman, whose name is Madame Mahuchet;she bribes her and learns at last that her master has preserved awitness of his youthful follies, a nice little boy that looks verymuch like him, and that this woman is his nurse, the second-handmother who has charge of little Frederick, who pays his quarterlyschool-bills, and through whose hands pass the twelve hundred or twothousand francs which Adolphe is supposed annually to lose at cards. 

"What of the mother?" exclaims Caroline. 

To end the matter, Justine, Caroline's good genius, proves to her thatM'lle Suzanne Beauminet, formerly a grisette and somewhat later MadameSainte-Suzanne, died at the hospital, or else that she has made herfortune, or else, again, that her place in society is so low there isno danger of madame's ever meeting her. 

Caroline breathes again: the dirk has been drawn from her heart, sheis quite happy; but she had no children but daughters, and would likea boy. This little drama of unjust suspicions, this comedy of theconjectures to which Mother Mahuchet gives rise, these phases of acauseless jealousy, are laid down here as the type of a situation, thevarieties of which are as innumerable as characters, grades and sorts. 

This source of petty troubles is pointed out here, in order that womenseated upon the river's bank may contemplate in it the course of theirown married life, following its ascent or descent, recalling their ownadventures to mind, their untold disasters, the foibles which causedtheir errors, and the peculiar fatalities to which were due an instantof frenzy, a moment of unnecessary despair, or sufferings which theymight have spared themselves, happy in their self-delusions. 

This vexation has a corollary in the following, one which is much moreserious and often without remedy, especially when its root lies amongvices of another kind, and which do not concern us, for, in this work, women are invariably esteemed honest--until the end. 

 THE DOMESTIC TYRANT. 

"My dear Caroline, " says Adolphe one day to his wife, "are yousatisfied with Justine?"

"Yes, dear, quite so. "

"Don't you think she speaks to you rather impertinently?"

"Do you suppose I would notice a maid? But it seems _you_ notice her!"

"What do you say?" asks Adolphe in an indignant way that is alwaysdelightful to women. 

Justine is a genuine maid for an actress, a woman of thirty stamped bythe small-pox with innumerable dimples, in which the loves are farfrom sporting: she is as brown as opium, has a good deal of leg andnot much body, gummy eyes, and a tournure to match. She would like tohave Benoit marry her, but at this unexpected suggestion, Benoit askedfor his discharge. Such is the portrait of the domestic tyrantenthroned by Caroline's jealousy. 

Justine takes her coffee in the morning, in bed, and manages to haveit as good as, not to say better than, that of her mistress. Justinesometimes goes out without asking leave, dressed like the wife of asecond-class banker. She sports a pink hat, one of her mistress' oldgowns made over, an elegant shawl, shoes of bronze kid, and jewelry ofdoubtful character. 

Justine is sometimes in a bad humor, and makes her mistress feel thatshe too is a woman like herself, though she is not married. She hasher whims, her fits of melancholy, her caprices. She even dares tohave her nerves! She replies curtly, she makes herself insupportableto the other servants, and, to conclude, her wages have beenconsiderably increased. 

"My dear, this girl is getting more intolerable every day, " saysAdolphe one morning to his wife, on noticing Justine listening at thekey-hole, "and if you don't send her away, I will!"

Caroline, greatly alarmed, is obliged to give Justine a talking to, while her husband is out. 

"Justine, you take advantage of my kindness to you: you have highwages, here, you have perquisites, presents: try to keep your place, for my husband wants to send you away. "

The maid humbles herself to the earth, she sheds tears: she is soattached to madame! Ah! she would rush into the fire for her: shewould let herself be chopped into mince-meat: she is ready foranything. 

"If you had anything to conceal, madame, I would take it on myself andsay it was me!"

"Very well, Justine, very good, my girl, " says Caroline, terrified:"but that's not the point: just try to keep in your place. "

"Ah, ha!" says Justine to herself, "monsieur wants to send me away, does he? Wait and see the deuce of a life I'll lead you, you oldcurmudgeon!"

A week after, Justine, who is dressing her mistress' hair, looks inthe glass to make sure that Caroline can see all the grimaces of hercountenance: and Caroline very soon inquires, "Why, what's the matter, Justine?"

"I would tell you, readily, madame, but then, madame, you are so weakwith monsieur!"

"Come, go on, what is it?"

"I know now, madame, why master wanted to show me the door: he hasconfidence in nobody but Benoit, and Benoit is playing the mum withme. "

"Well, what does that prove? Has anything been discovered?"

"I'm sure that between the two they are plotting something against youmadame, " returns the maid with authority. 

Caroline, whom Justine watches in the glass, turns pale: all thetortures of the previous petty trouble return, and Justine sees thatshe has become as indispensable to her mistress as spies are to thegovernment when a conspiracy is discovered. Still, Caroline's friendsdo not understand why she keeps so disagreeable a servant girl, onewho wears a hat, whose manners are impertinent, and who gives herselfthe airs of a lady. 

This stupid domination is talked of at Madame Deschars', at Madame deFischtaminel's, and the company consider it funny. A few ladies thinkthey can see certain monstrous reasons for it, reasons whichcompromise Caroline's honor. 

Axiom. --In society, people can put cloaks on every kind of truth, eventhe prettiest. 

In short the _aria della calumnia_ is executed precisely as ifBartholo were singing it. 

It is averred that Caroline cannot discharge her maid. 

Society devotes itself desperately to discovering the secret of thisenigma. Madame de Fischtaminel makes fun of Adolphe who goes home in arage, has a scene with Caroline and discharges Justine. 

This produces such an effect upon Justine, that she falls sick, andtakes to her bed. Caroline observes to her husband, that it would beawkward to turn a girl in Justine's condition into the street, a girlwho is so much attached to them, too, and who has been with them sinetheir marriage. 

"Let her go then as soon as she is well!" says Adolphe. 

Caroline, reassured in regard to Adolphe, and indecently swindled byJustine, at last comes to desire to get rid of her: she applies aviolent remedy to the disease, and makes up her mind to go under theCaudine Forks of another petty trouble, as follows:

 THE AVOWAL. 

One morning, Adolphe is petted in a very unusual manner. The too happyhusband wonders what may be the cause of this development ofaffection, and he hears Caroline, in her most winning tones, utter theword: "Adolphe?"

"Well?" he replies, in alarm at the internal agitation betrayed byCaroline's voice. 

"Promise not to be angry. "

"Well. "

"Not to be vexed with me. "

"Never. Go on. "

"To forgive me and never say anything about it. "

"But tell me what it is!"

"Besides, you are the one that's in the wrong--"

"Speak, or I'll go away. "

"There's no one but you that can get me out of the scrape--and it wasyou that got me into it. "

"Come, come. "

"It's about--"

"About--"

"About Justine!"

"Don't speak of her, she's discharged. I won't see her again, herstyle of conduct exposes your reputation--"

"What can people say--what have they said?"

The scene changes, the result of which is a secondary explanationwhich makes Caroline blush, as she sees the bearing of thesuppositions of her best friends. 

"Well, now, Adolphe, it's to you I owe all this. Why didn't you tellme about Frederick?"

"Frederick the Great? The King of Prussia?"

"What creatures men are! Hypocrite, do you want to make me believethat you have forgotten your son so soon, M'lle Suzanne Beauminet'sson?"

"Then you know--?"

"The whole thing! And old other Mahuchet, and your absences from hometo give him a good dinner on holidays. "

"How like moles you pious women can be if you try!" exclaims Adolphe, in his terror. 

"It was Justine that found it out. "

"Ah! Now I understand the reason of her insolence. "

"Oh, your Caroline has been very wretched, dear, and this spyingsystem, which was produced by my love for you, for I do love you, andmadly too, --if you deceived me, I would fly to the extremity ofcreation, --well, as I was going to say, this unfounded jealousy hasput me in Justine's power, so, my precious, get me out of it the bestway you can!"

"Let this teach you, my angel, never to make use of your servants, ifyou want them to be of use to you. It is the lowest of tyrannies, thisbeing at the mercy of one's people. "

Adolphe takes advantage of this circumstance to alarm Caroline, hethinks of future Chaumontel's affairs, and would be glad to have nomore espionage. 

Justine is sent for, Adolphe peremptorily dismisses her withoutwaiting to hear her explanation. Caroline imagines her vexations at anend. She gets another maid. 

Justine, whose twelve or fifteen thousand francs have attracted thenotice of a water carrier, becomes Madame Chavagnac, and goes into theapple business. Ten months after, in Adolphe's absence, Carolinereceives a letter written upon school-boy paper, in strides whichwould require orthopedic treatment for three months, and thusconceived:

"Madam!

"Yu ar shaimphoolly diseeved bi yure huzban fur mame Deuxfischtaminelle, hee goze their evry eavning, yu ar az blynde az aBatt. Your gott wott yu dizzurv, and I am Glad ovit, and I have theehonur ov prezenting yu the assurunz ov Mi moaste ds Sting guischtrespecks. "

Caroline starts like a lion who has been stung by a bumble-bee; sheplaces herself once more, and of her own accord, upon the griddle ofsuspicion, and begins her struggle with the unknown all over again. 

When she has discovered the injustice of her suspicions, there comesanother letter with an offer to furnish her with details relative to aChaumontel's affair which Justine has unearthed. 

The petty trouble of avowals, ladies, is often more serious than this, as you perhaps have occasion to remember. 

 HUMILIATIONS. 

To the glory of women, let it be said, they care for their husbandseven when their husbands care no more for them, not only because thereare more ties, socially speaking, between a married woman and a man, than between the man and the wife; but also because woman has moredelicacy and honor than man, the chief conjugal question apart, as amatter of course. 

Axiom. --In a husband, there is only a man; in a married woman, thereis a man, a father, a mother and a woman. 

A married woman has sensibility enough for four, or for five even, ifyou look closely. 

Now, it is not improper to observe in this place, that, in a woman'seyes, love is a general absolution: the man who is a good lover maycommit crimes, if he will, he is always as pure as snow in the eyes ofher who loves him, if he truly loves her. As to a married woman, lovedor not, she feels so deeply that the honor and consideration of herhusband are the fortune of her children, that she acts like the womanin love, --so active is the sense of community of interest. 

This profound sentiment engenders, for certain Carolines, pettytroubles which, unfortunately for this book, have their dismal side. 

Adolphe is compromised. We will not enumerate all the methods ofcompromising oneself, for we might become personal. Let us take, as anexample, the social error which our epoch excuses, permits, understands and commits the most of any--the case of an honestrobbery, of skillfully concealed corruption in office, or of somemisrepresentation that becomes excusable when it has succeeded, as, for instance, having an understanding with parties in power, for thesale of property at the highest possible price to a city, or acountry. 

Thus, in a bankruptcy, Adolphe, in order to protect himself (thismeans to recover his claims), has become mixed up in certain unlawfuldoings which may bring a man to the necessity of testifying before theCourt of Assizes. In fact, it is not known that the daring creditorwill not be considered a party. 

Take notice that in all cases of bankruptcy, protecting oneself isregarded as the most sacred of duties, even by the most respectablehouses: the thing is to keep the bad side of the protection out ofsight, as they do in prudish England. 

Adolphe does not know what to do, as his counsel has told him not toappear in the matter: so he has recourse to Caroline. He gives her alesson, he coaches her, he teaches her the Code, he examines herdress, he equips her as a brig sent on a voyage, and despatches her tothe office of some judge, or some syndic. The judge is apparently aman of severe morality, but in reality a libertine: he retains hisserious expression on seeing a pretty woman enter, and makes sundryvery uncomplimentary remarks about Adolphe. 

"I pity you, madame, you belong to a man who may involve you innumerous unpleasant affairs: a few more matters like this, and he willbe quite disgraced. Have you any children? Excuse my asking; you areso young, it is perfectly natural. " And the judge comes as near toCaroline as possible. 

"Yes, sir. "

"Ah, great heavens! what a prospect is yours! My first thought was forthe woman, but now I pity you doubly, I think of the mother. Ah, howyou must have suffered in coming here! Poor, poor woman!"

"Ah, sir, you take an interest in me, do you not?"

"Alas, what can I do?" says the judge, darting a glance sidewise atCaroline. "What you ask of me is a dereliction of duty, and I am amagistrate before I am a man. "

"Oh, sir, only be a man--"

"Are you aware of the full bearing of that request, fair creature?" Atthis point the magistrate tremblingly takes Caroline's hand. 

Caroline, who remembers that the honor of her husband and children isat stake, says to herself that this is not the time to play the prude. She abandons her hand, making just resistance enough for the old man(happily he is an old man) to consider it a favor. 

"Come, come, my beauty, " resumes the judge, "I should be loath tocause so lovely a woman to shed tears; we'll see about it. You shallcome to-morrow evening and tell me the whole affair. We must look atthe papers, we will examine them together--"

"Sir--"

"It's indispensable. "

"But, sir--"

"Don't be alarmed, my dear, a judge is likely to know how to grantwhat is due to justice and--" he puts on a shrewd look here--"tobeauty. "

"But, sir--"

"Be quite at your ease, " he adds, holding her hand closely in his, "and we'll try to reduce this great crime down to a peccadillo. " Andhe goes to the door with Caroline, who is frightened to death at anappointment thus proposed. 

The syndic is a lively young man, and he receives Madame Adolphe witha smile. He smiles at everything, and he smiles as he takes her roundthe waist with an agility which leaves Caroline no time to resist, especially as she says to herself, "Adolphe particularly recommendedme not to vex the syndic. "

Nevertheless Caroline escapes, in the interest of the syndic himself, and again pronounces the "Sir!" which she had said three times to thejudge. 

"Don't be angry with me, you are irresistible, you are an angel, andyour husband is a monster: for what does he mean by sending a siren toa young man whom he knows to be inflammable!"

"Sir, my husband could not come himself; he is in bed, very sick, andyou threatened him so terribly that the urgency of the matter--"

"Hasn't he got a lawyer, an attorney?"

Caroline is terrified by this remark which reveals Adolphe's profoundrascality. 

"He supposed, sir, that you would have pity upon the mother of afamily, upon her children--"

"Ta, ta, ta, " returns the syndic. "You have come to influence myindependence, my conscience, you want me to give the creditors up toyou: well, I'll do more, I give you up my heart, my fortune! Yourhusband wants to save _his_ honor, _my_ honor is at your disposal!"

"Sir, " cries Caroline, as she tries to raise the syndic who has thrownhimself at her feet. "You alarm me!"

She plays the terrified female and thus reaches the door, getting outof a delicate situation as women know how to do it, that is, withoutcompromising anything or anybody. 

"I will come again, " she says smiling, "when you behave better. "

"You leave me thus! Take care! Your husband may yet find himselfseated at the bar of the Court of Assizes: he is accessory to afraudulent bankruptcy, and we know several things about him that arenot by any means honorable. It is not his first departure fromrectitude; he has done a good many dirty things, he has been mixed upin disgraceful intrigues, and you are singularly careful of the honorof a man who cares as little for his own honor as he does for yours. "

Caroline, alarmed by these words, lets go the door, shuts it and comesback. 

"What do you mean, sir?" she exclaims, furious at this outrageousbroadside. 

"Why, this affair--"

"Chaumontel's affair?"

"No, his speculations in houses that he had built by people that wereinsolvent. "

Caroline remembers the enterprise undertaken by Adolphe to double hisincome: (See _The Jesuitism of Women_) she trembles. Her curiosity isin the syndic's favor. 

"Sit down here. There, at this distance, I will behave well, but I canlook at you. "

And he narrates, at length, the conception due to du Tillet thebanker, interrupting himself to say: "Oh, what a pretty, cunning, little foot; no one but you could have such a foot as that--_DuTillet, therefore, compromised. _ What an ear, too! You have beendoubtless told that you had a delicious ear--_And du Tillet wasright, for judgment had already been given_--I love small ears, butlet me have a model of yours, and I will do anything you like--_duTillet profited by this to throw the whole loss on your idiotichusband_: oh, what a charming silk, you are divinely dressed!"

"Where were we, sir?"

"How can I remember while admiring your Raphaelistic head?"

At the twenty-seventh compliment, Caroline considers the syndic a manof wit: she makes him a polite speech, and goes away without learningmuch more of the enterprise which, not long before had swallowed upthree hundred thousand francs. 

There are many huge variations of this petty trouble. 

EXAMPLE. Adolphe is brave and susceptible: he is walking on the ChampsElysees, where there is a crowd of people; in this crowd are severalill-mannered young men who indulge in jokes of doubtful propriety:Caroline puts up with them and pretends not to hear them, in order tokeep her husband out of a duel. 

ANOTHER EXAMPLE. A child belonging to the genus Terrible, exclaims inthe presence of everybody:

"Mamma, would you let Justine hit me?"

"Certainly not. "

"Why do you ask, my little man?" inquires Madame Foullepointe. 

"Because she just gave father a big slap, and he's ever so muchstronger than me. "

Madame Foullepointe laughs, and Adolphe, who intended to pay court toher, is cruelly joked by her, after having had a first last quarrelwith Caroline. 

 THE LAST QUARREL. 

In every household, husbands and wives must one day hear the strikingof a fatal hour. It is a knell, the death and end of jealousy, agreat, noble and charming passion, the only true symptom of love, ifit is not even its double. When a woman is no longer jealous of herhusband, all is over, she loves him no more. So, conjugal love expiresin the last quarrel that a woman gives herself the trouble to raise. 

Axiom. --When a woman ceases to quarrel with her husband, the Minotaurhas seated himself in a corner arm-chair, tapping his boots with hiscane. 

Every woman must remember her last quarrel, that supreme petty troublewhich often explodes about nothing, but more often still on someoccasion of a brutal fact or of a decisive proof. This cruel farewellto faith, to the childishness of love, to virtue even, is in a degreeas capricious as life itself. Like life it varies in every house. 

Here, the author ought perhaps to search out all the varieties ofquarrels, if he desires to be precise. 

Thus, Caroline may have discovered that the judicial robe of thesyndic in Chaumontel's affair, hides a robe of infinitely softerstuff, of an agreeable, silky color: that Chaumontel's hair, in short, is fair, and that his eyes are blue. 

Or else Caroline, who arose before Adolphe, may have seen hisgreatcoat thrown wrong side out across a chair; the edge of a littleperfumed paper, just peeping out of the side-pocket, may haveattracted her by its whiteness, like a ray of the sun entering a darkroom through a crack in the window: or else, while taking Adolphe inher arms and feeling his pocket, she may have caused the note tocrackle: or else she may have been informed of the state of things bya foreign odor that she has long noticed upon him, and may have readthese lines:

"Ungraitfull wun, wot du yu supoz I no About Hipolite. Kum, and yushal se whether I Love yu. "

Or this:

"Yesterday, love, you made me wait for you: what will it beto-morrow?"

Or this:

"The women who love you, my dear sir, are very unhappy in hating youso, when you are not with them: take care, for the hatred which existsduring your absence, may possibly encroach upon the hours you spend intheir company. "

Or this:

"You traitorous Chodoreille, what were you doing yesterday on theboulevard with a woman hanging on your arm? If it was your wife, accept my compliments of condolence upon her absent charms: she hasdoubtless deposited them at the pawnbroker's, and the ticket to redeemthem with is lost. "

Four notes emanating from the grisette, the lady, the pretentiouswoman in middle life, and the actress, among whom Adolphe has chosenhis _belle_ (according to the Fischtaminellian vocabulary). 

Or else Caroline, taken veiled by Ferdinand to Ranelagh Garden, seeswith her own eyes Adolphe abandoning himself furiously to the polka, holding one of the ladies of honor to Queen Pomare in his arms; orelse, again, Adolphe has for the seventh time, made a mistake in thename, and called his wife Juliette, Charlotte or Lisa: or, a grocer orrestaurateur sends to the house, during Adolphe's absence, certaindamning bills which fall into Caroline's hands. 

PAPERS RELATING TO CHAUMONTEL'S AFFAIR. 

(Private Tables Served. )

M. Adolphe to Perrault, To 1 Pate de Foie Gras delivered at Madame Schontz's, the 6th of January, fr. 22. 50Six bottle of assorted wines, 70. 00To one special breakfast delivered at Congress Hotel, the 11th of February, at No. 21---- Stipulated price, 100. 00 ______

 Total, Francs, 192. 50

Caroline examines the dates and remembers them as appointments madefor business connected with Chaumontel's affair. Adolphe haddesignated the sixth of January as the day fixed for a meeting atwhich the creditors in Chaumontel's affair were to receive the sumsdue them. On the eleventh of February he had an appointment with thenotary, in order to sign a receipt relative to Chaumontel's affair. 

Or else--but an attempt to mention all the chances of discovery wouldbe the undertaking of a madman. 

Every woman will remember to herself how the bandage with which hereyes were bound fell off: how, after many doubts, and agonies ofheart, she made up her mind to have a final quarrel for the simplepurpose of finishing the romance, putting the seal to the book, stipulating for her independence, or beginning life over again. 

Some women are fortunate enough to have anticipated their husbands, and they then have the quarrel as a sort of justification. 

Nervous women give way to a burst of passion and commit acts ofviolence. 

Women of mild temper assume a decided tone which appalls the mostintrepid husbands. Those who have no vengeance ready shed a great manytears. 

Those who love you forgive you. Ah, they conceive so readily, like thewoman called "Ma berline, " that their Adolphe must be loved by thewomen of France, that they are rejoiced to possess, legally, a manabout whom everybody goes crazy. 

Certain women with lips tight shut like a vise, with a muddycomplexion and thin arms, treat themselves to the malicious pleasureof promenading their Adolphe through the quagmire of falsehood andcontradiction: they question him (see _Troubles within Troubles_), like a magistrate examining a criminal, reserving the spitefulenjoyment of crushing his denials by positive proof at a decisivemoment. Generally, in this supreme scene of conjugal life, the fairsex is the executioner, while, in the contrary case, man is theassassin. 

This is the way of it: This last quarrel (you shall know why theauthor has called it the _last_), is always terminated by a solemn, sacred promise, made by scrupulous, noble, or simply intelligent women(that is to say, by all women), and which we give here in its grandestform. 

"Enough, Adolphe! We love each other no more; you have deceived me, and I shall never forget it. I may forgive it, but I can never forgetit. "

Women represent themselves as implacable only to render theirforgiveness charming: they have anticipated God. 

"We have now to live in common like two friends, " continues Caroline. "Well, let us live like two comrades, two brothers, I do not wish tomake your life intolerable, and I never again will speak to you ofwhat has happened--"

Adolphe gives Caroline his hand: she takes it, and shakes it in theEnglish style. Adolphe thanks Caroline, and catches a glimpse ofbliss: he has converted his wife into a sister, and hopes to be abachelor again. 

The next day Caroline indulges in a very witty allusion (Adolphecannot help laughing at it) to Chaumontel's affair. In society shemakes general remarks which, to Adolphe, are very particular remarks, about their last quarrel. 

At the end of a fortnight a day never passes without Caroline'srecalling their last quarrel by saying: "It was the day when I foundChaumontel's bill in your pocket:" or "it happened since our lastquarrel:" or, "it was the day when, for the first time, I had a clearidea of life, " etc. She assassinates Adolphe, she martyrizes him! Insociety she gives utterance to terrible things. 

"We are happy, my dear [to a lady], when we love each other no longer:it's then that we learn how to make ourselves beloved, " and she looksat Ferdinand. 

In short, the last quarrel never comes to an end, and from this factflows the following axiom:

Axiom. --Putting yourself in the wrong with your lawful wife, issolving the problem of Perpetual Motion. 

 A SIGNAL FAILURE. 

Women, and especially married women, stick ideas into their brain-panprecisely as they stick pins into a pincushion, and the devil himself, --do you mind?--could not get them out: they reserve to themselves theexclusive right of sticking them in, pulling them out, and stickingthem in again. 

Caroline is riding home one evening from Madame Foullepointe's in aviolent state of jealousy and ambition. 

Madame Foullepointe, the lioness--but this word requires anexplanation. It is a fashionable neologism, and gives expression tocertain rather meagre ideas relative to our present society: you mustuse it, if you want to describe a woman who is all the rage. Thislioness rides on horseback every day, and Caroline has taken it intoher head to learn to ride also. 

Observe that in this conjugal phase, Adolphe and Caroline are in theseason which we have denominated _A Household Revolution_, and thatthey have had two or three _Last Quarrels_. 

"Adolphe, " she says, "do you want to do me a favor?"

"Of course. "

"Won't you refuse?"

"If your request is reasonable, I am willing--"

"Ah, already--that's a true husband's word--if--"

"Come, what is it?"

"I want to learn to ride on horseback. "

"Now, is it a possible thing, Caroline?"

Caroline looks out of the window, and tries to wipe away a dry tear. 

"Listen, " resumes Adolphe; "I cannot let you go alone to theriding-school; and I cannot go with you while business gives me theannoyance it does now. What's the matter? I think I have given youunanswerable reasons. "

Adolphe foresees the hiring of a stable, the purchase of a pony, theintroduction of a groom and of a servant's horse into theestablishment--in short, all the nuisance of female lionization. 

When a man gives a woman reasons instead of giving her what she wants--well, few men have ventured to descend into that small abyss calledthe heart, to test the power of the tempest that suddenly bursts forththere. 

"Reasons! If you want reasons, here they are!" exclaims Caroline. "Iam your wife: you don't seem to care to please me any more. And as tothe expenses, you greatly overrate them, my dear. "

Women have as many inflections of voice to pronounce these words, _Mydear_, as the Italians have to say _Amico_. I have counted twenty-ninewhich express only various degrees of hatred. 

"Well, you'll see, " resumes Caroline, "I shall be sick, and you willpay the apothecary and the doctor as much as the price of a horse. Ishall be walled up here at home, and that's all you want. I asked thefavor of you, though I was sure of a refusal: I only wanted to knowhow you would go to work to give it. "

"But, Caroline--"

"Leave me alone at the riding-school!" she continues withoutlistening. "Is that a reason? Can't I go with Madame de Fischtaminel?Madame de Fischtaminel is learning to ride on horseback, and I don'timagine that Monsieur de Fischtaminel goes with her. "

"But, Caroline--"

"I am delighted with your solicitude. You think a great deal of me, really. Monsieur de Fischtaminel has more confidence in his wife, thanyou have in yours. He does not go with her, not he! Perhaps it's onaccount of this confidence that you don't want me at the school, whereI might see your goings on with the fair Fischtaminel. "

Adolphe tries to hide his vexation at this torrent of words, whichbegins when they are still half way from home, and has no sea to emptyinto. When Caroline is in her room, she goes on in the same way. 

"You see that if reasons could restore my health or prevent me fromdesiring a kind of exercise pointed out by nature herself, I shouldnot be in want of reasons, and that I know all the reasons that thereare, and that I went over with the reasons before I spoke to you. "

This, ladies, may with the more truth be called the prologue to theconjugal drama, from the fact that it is vigorously delivered, embellished with a commentary of gestures, ornamented with glances andall the other vignettes with which you usually illustrate suchmasterpieces. 

Caroline, when she has once planted in Adolphe's heart theapprehension of a scene of constantly reiterated demands, feels herhatred for his control largely increase. Madame pouts, and she poutsso fiercely, that Adolphe is forced to notice it, on pain of verydisagreeable consequences, for all is over, be sure of that, betweentwo beings married by the mayor, or even at Gretna Green, when one ofthem no longer notices the sulkings of the other. 

Axiom. --A sulk that has struck in is a deadly poison. 

It was to prevent this suicide of love that our ingenious Franceinvented boudoirs. Women could not well have Virgil's willows in theeconomy of our modern dwellings. On the downfall of oratories, theselittle cubbies become boudoirs. 

This conjugal drama has three acts. The act of the prologue is alreadyplayed. Then comes the act of false coquetry: one of those in whichFrench women have the most success. 

Adolphe is walking about the room, divesting himself of his apparel, and the man thus engaged, divests himself of his strength as well asof his clothing. To every man of forty, this axiom will appearprofoundly just:

Axiom. --The ideas of a man who has taken his boots and his suspendersoff, are no longer those of a man who is still sporting these twotyrants of the mind. 

Take notice that this is only an axiom in wedded life. In morals, itis what we call a relative theorem. 

Caroline watches, like a jockey on the race course, the moment whenshe can distance her adversary. She makes her preparations to beirresistibly fascinating to Adolphe. 

Women possess a power of mimicking pudicity, a knowledge of secretswhich might be those of a frightened dove, a particular register forsinging, like Isabella, in the fourth act of _Robert le Diable: "Gracepour toi! Grace pour moi!"_ which leave jockeys and horse trainerswhole miles behind. As usual, the _Diable_ succumbs. It is the eternalhistory, the grand Christian mystery of the bruised serpent, of thedelivered woman becoming the great social force, as the Fourieristssay. It is especially in this that the difference between the Orientalslave and the Occidental wife appears. 

Upon the conjugal pillow, the second act ends by a number ofonomatopes, all of them favorable to peace. Adolphe, precisely likechildren in the presence of a slice of bread and molasses, promiseseverything that Caroline wants. 

THIRD ACT. As the curtain rises, the stage represents a chamber in astate of extreme disorder. Adolphe, in his dressing gown, tries to goout furtively and without waking Caroline, who is sleeping profoundly, and finally does go out. 

Caroline, exceedingly happy, gets up, consults her mirror, and makesinquiries about breakfast. An hour afterward, when she is ready shelearns that breakfast is served. 

"Tell monsieur. "

"Madame, he is in the little parlor. "

"What a nice man he is, " she says, going up to Adolphe, and talkingthe babyish, caressing language of the honey-moon. 

"What for, pray?"

"Why, to let his little Liline ride the horsey. "

OBSERVATION. During the honey-moon, some few married couples, --veryyoung ones, --make use of languages, which, in ancient days, Aristotleclassified and defined. (See his Pedagogy. ) Thus they are perpetuallyusing such terminations as _lala_, _nana_, _coachy-poachy_, just asmothers and nurses use them to babies. This is one of the secretreasons, discussed and recognized in big quartos by the Germans, whichdetermined the Cabires, the creators of the Greek mythology, torepresent Love as a child. There are other reasons very well known towomen, the principal of which is, that, in their opinion, love in menis always _small_. 

"Where did you get that idea, my sweet? You must have dreamed it!"

"What!"

Caroline stands stark still: she opens wide her eyes which are alreadyconsiderably widened by amazement. Being inwardly epileptic, she saysnot a word: she merely gazes at Adolphe. Under the satanic fires oftheir gaze, Adolphe turns half way round toward the dining-room; buthe asks himself whether it would not be well to let Caroline take onelesson, and to tip the wink to the riding-master, to disgust her withequestrianism by the harshness of his style of instruction. 

There is nothing so terrible as an actress who reckons upon a success, and who _fait four_. 

In the language of the stage, to _faire four_ is to play to awretchedly thin house, or to obtain not the slightest applause. It istaking great pains for nothing, in short a _signal failure_. 

This petty trouble--it is very petty--is reproduced in a thousand waysin married life, when the honey-moon is over, and when the wife has nopersonal fortune. 

In spite of the author's repugnance to inserting anecdotes in anexclusively aphoristic work, the tissue of which will bear nothing butthe most delicate and subtle observations, --from the nature of thesubject at least, --it seems to him necessary to illustrate this pageby an incident narrated by one of our first physicians. Thisrepetition of the subject involves a rule of conduct very much in usewith the doctors of Paris. 

A certain husband was in our Adolphe's situation. His Caroline, havingonce made a signal failure, was determined to conquer, for Carolineoften does conquer! (See _The Physiology of Marriage_, MeditationXXVI, Paragraph _Nerves_. ) She had been lying about on the sofas fortwo months, getting up at noon, taking no part in the amusements ofthe city. She would not go to the theatre, --oh, the disgustingatmosphere!--the lights, above all, the lights! Then the bustle, coming out, going in, the music, --it might be fatal, it's so terriblyexciting!

She would not go on excursions to the country, oh, certainly it washer desire to do so!--but she would like (desiderata) a carriage ofher own, horses of her own--her husband would not give her anequipage. And as to going in hacks, in hired conveyances, the barethought gave her a rising at the stomach!

She would not have any cooking--the smell of the meats produced asudden nausea. She drank innumerable drugs that her maid never saw hertake. 

In short, she expended large amounts of time and money in attitudes, privations, effects, pearl-white to give her the pallor of a corpse, machinery, and the like, precisely as when the manager of a theatrespreads rumors about a piece gotten up in a style of Orientalmagnificence, without regard to expense!

This couple had got so far as to believe that even a journey to thesprings, to Ems, to Hombourg, to Carlsbad, would hardly cure theinvalid: but madame would not budge, unless she could go in her owncarriage. Always that carriage!

Adolphe held out, and would not yield. 

Caroline, who was a woman of great sagacity, admitted that her husbandwas right. 

"Adolphe is right, " she said to her friends, "it is I who amunreasonable: he can not, he ought not, have a carriage yet: men knowbetter than we do the situation of their business. "

At times Adolphe was perfectly furious! Women have ways about themthat demand the justice of Tophet itself. Finally, during the thirdmonth, he met one of his school friends, a lieutenant in the corps ofphysicians, modest as all young doctors are: he had had his epaulettesone day only, and could give the order to fire!

"For a young woman, a young doctor, " said our Adolphe to himself. 

And he proposed to the future Bianchon to visit his wife and tell himthe truth about her condition. 

"My dear, it is time that you should have a physician, " said Adolphethat evening to his wife, "and here is the best for a pretty woman. "

The novice makes a conscientious examination, questions madame, feelsher pulse discreetly, inquires into the slightest symptoms, and, atthe end, while conversing, allows a smile, an expression, which, ifnot ironical, are extremely incredulous, to play involuntarily uponhis lips, and his lips are quite in sympathy with his eyes. Heprescribes some insignificant remedy, and insists upon its importance, promising to call again to observe its effect. In the ante-chamber, thinking himself alone with his school-mate, he indulges in aninexpressible shrug of the shoulders. 

"There's nothing the matter with your wife, my boy, " he says: "she istrifling with both you and me. "

"Well, I thought so. "

"But if she continues the joke, she will make herself sick in earnest:I am too sincerely your friend to enter into such a speculation, for Iam determined that there shall be an honest man beneath the physician, in me--"

"My wife wants a carriage. "

As in the _Solo on the Hearse_, this Caroline listened at the door. 

Even at the present day, the young doctor is obliged to clear his pathof the calumnies which this charming woman is continually throwinginto it: and for the sake of a quiet life, he has been obliged toconfess his little error--a young man's error--and to mention hisenemy by name, in order to close her lips. 

 THE CHESTNUTS IN THE FIRE. 

No one can tell how many shades and gradations there are inmisfortune, for everything depends upon the character of theindividual, upon the force of the imagination, upon the strength ofthe nerves. If it is impossible to catch these so variable shades, wemay at least point out the most striking colors, and the principalattendant incidents. The author has therefore reserved this pettytrouble for the last, for it is the only one that is at once comic anddisastrous. 

The author flatters himself that he has mentioned the principalexamples. Thus, women who have arrived safely at the haven, the happyage of forty, the period when they are delivered from scandal, calumny, suspicion, when their liberty begins: these women willcertainly do him the justice to state that all the critical situationsof a family are pointed out or represented in this book. 

Caroline has her Chaumontel's affair. She has learned how to induceAdolphe to go out unexpectedly, and has an understanding with Madamede Fischtaminel. 

In every household, within a given time, ladies like Madame deFischtaminel become Caroline's main resource. 

Caroline pets Madame de Fischtaminel with all the tenderness that theAfrican army is now bestowing upon Abd-el-Kader: she is as solicitousin her behalf as a physician is anxious to avoid curing a richhypochondriac. Between the two, Caroline and Madame de Fischtaminelinvent occupations for dear Adolphe, when neither of them desire thepresence of that demigod among their penates. Madame de Fischtamineland Caroline, who have become, through the efforts of MadameFoullepointe, the best friends in the world, have even gone so far asto learn and employ that feminine free-masonry, the rites of whichcannot be made familiar by any possible initiation. 

If Caroline writes the following little note to Madame deFischtaminel:

"Dearest Angel:

"You will probably see Adolphe to-morrow, but do not keep him toolong, for I want to go to ride with him at five: but if you aredesirous of taking him to ride yourself, do so and I will take him up. You ought to teach me your secret for entertaining used-up people asyou do. "

Madame de Fischtaminel says to herself: "Gracious! So I shall havethat fellow on my hands to-morrow from twelve o'clock to five. "

Axiom. --Men do not always know a woman's positive request when theysee it; but another woman never mistakes it: she does the contrary. 

Those sweet little beings called women, and especially Parisian women, are the prettiest jewels that social industry has invented. Those whodo not adore them, those who do not feel a constant jubilation atseeing them laying their plots while braiding their hair, creatingspecial idioms for themselves and constructing with their slenderfingers machines strong enough to destroy the most powerful fortunes, must be wanting in a positive sense. 

On one occasion Caroline takes the most minute precautions. She writesthe day before to Madame Foullepointe to go to St. Maur with Adolphe, to look at a piece of property for sale there. Adolphe would go tobreakfast with her. She aids Adolphe in dressing. She twits him withthe care he bestows upon his toilet, and asks absurd questions aboutMadame Foullepointe. 

"She's real nice, and I think she is quite tired of Charles: you'llinscribe her yet upon your catalogue, you old Don Juan: but you won'thave any further need of Chaumontel's affair; I'm no longer jealous, you've got a passport. Do you like that better than being adored?Monster, observe how considerate I am. "

So soon as her husband has gone, Caroline, who had not omitted, theprevious evening, to write to Ferdinand to come to breakfast with her, equips herself in a costume which, in that charming eighteenth centuryso calumniated by republicans, humanitarians and idiots, women ofquality called their fighting-dress. 

Caroline has taken care of everything. Love is the first house servantin the world, so the table is set with positively diabolic coquetry. There is the white damask cloth, the little blue service, the silvergilt urn, the chiseled milk pitcher, and flowers all round!

If it is winter, she has got some grapes, and has rummaged the cellarfor the very best old wine. The rolls are from the most famousbaker's. The succulent dishes, the _pate de foie gras_, the whole ofthis elegant entertainment, would have made the author of theGlutton's Almanac neigh with impatience: it would make a note-shaversmile, and tell a professor of the old University what the matter inhand is. 

Everything is prepared. Caroline has been ready since the nightbefore: she contemplates her work. Justine sighs and arranges thefurniture. Caroline picks off the yellow leaves of the plants in thewindows. A woman, in these cases, disguises what we may call theprancings of the heart, by those meaningless occupations in which thefingers have all the grip of pincers, when the pink nails burn, andwhen this unspoken exclamation rasps the throat: "He hasn't come yet!"

What a blow is this announcement by Justine: "Madame, here's aletter!"

A letter in place of Ferdinand! How does she ever open it? What agesof life slip by as she unfolds it! Women know this by experience! Asto men, when they are in such maddening passes, they murder theirshirt-frills. 

"Justine, Monsieur Ferdinand is ill!" exclaims Caroline. "Send for acarriage. "

As Justine goes down stairs, Adolphe comes up. 

"My poor mistress!" observes Justine. "I guess she won't want thecarriage now. "

"Oh my! Where have you come from?" cries Caroline, on seeing Adolphestanding in ecstasy before her voluptuous breakfast. 

Adolphe, whose wife long since gave up treating _him_ to such charmingbanquets, does not answer. But he guesses what it all means, as hesees the cloth inscribed with the delightful ideas which Madame deFischtaminel or the syndic of Chaumontel's affair have often inscribedfor him upon tables quite as elegant. 

"Whom are you expecting?" he asks in his turn. 

"Who could it be, except Ferdinand?" replies Caroline. 

"And is he keeping you waiting?"

"He is sick, poor fellow. "

A quizzical idea enters Adolphe's head, and he replies, winking withone eye only: "I have just seen him. "

"Where?"

"In front of the Cafe de Paris, with some friends. "

"But why have you come back?" says Caroline, trying to conceal hermurderous fury. 

"Madame Foullepointe, who was tired of Charles, you said, has beenwith him at Ville d'Avray since yesterday. "

Adolphe sits down, saying: "This has happened very appropriately, forI'm as hungry as two bears. "

Caroline sits down, too, and looks at Adolphe stealthily: she weepsinternally: but she very soon asks, in a tone of voice that shemanages to render indifferent, "Who was Ferdinand with?"

"With some fellows who lead him into bad company. The young man isgetting spoiled: he goes to Madame Schontz's. You ought to write toyour uncle. It was probably some breakfast or other, the result of abet made at M'lle Malaga's. " He looks slyly at Caroline, who drops hereyes to conceal her tears. "How beautiful you have made yourself thismorning, " Adolphe resumes. "Ah, you are a fair match for yourbreakfast. I don't think Ferdinand will make as good a meal as Ishall, " etc. , etc. 

Adolphe manages the joke so cleverly that he inspires his wife withthe idea of punishing Ferdinand. Adolphe, who claims to be as hungryas two bears, causes Caroline to forget that a carriage waits for herat the door. 

The female that tends the gate at the house Ferdinand lives in, arrives at about two o'clock, while Adolphe is asleep on a sofa. ThatIris of bachelors comes to say to Caroline that Monsieur Ferdinand isvery much in need of some one. 

"He's drunk, I suppose, " says Caroline in a rage. 

"He fought a duel this morning, madame. "

Caroline swoons, gets up and rushes to Ferdinand, wishing Adolphe atthe bottom of the sea. 

When women are the victims of these little inventions, which are quiteas adroit as their own, they are sure to exclaim, "What abominablemonsters men are!"

 ULTIMA RATIO. 

We have come to our last observation. Doubtless this work is beginningto tire you quite as much as its subject does, if you are married. 

This work, which, according to the author, is to the _Physiology ofMarriage_ what Fact is to Theory, or History to Philosophy, has itslogic, as life, viewed as a whole, has its logic, also. 

This logic--fatal, terrible--is as follows. At the close of the firstpart of the book--a book filled with serious pleasantry--Adolphe hasreached, as you must have noticed, a point of complete indifference inmatrimonial matters. 

He has read novels in which the writers advise troublesome husbands toembark for the other world, or to live in peace with the fathers oftheir children, to pet and adore them: for if literature is thereflection of manners, we must admit that our manners recognize thedefects pointed out by the _Physiology of Marriage_ in thisfundamental institution. More than one great genius has dealt thissocial basis terrible blows, without shaking it. 

Adolphe has especially read his wife too closely, and disguises hisindifference by this profound word: indulgence. He is indulgent withCaroline, he sees in her nothing but the mother of his children, agood companion, a sure friend, a brother. 

When the petty troubles of the wife cease, Caroline, who is moreclever than her husband, has come to profit by this advantageousindulgence: but she does not give her dear Adolphe up. It is woman'snature never to yield any of her rights. DIEU ET MON DROIT--CONJUGAL!is, as is well known, the motto of England, and is especially soto-day. 

Women have such a love of domination that we will relate an anecdote, not ten years old, in point. It is a very young anecdote. 

One of the grand dignitaries of the Chamber of Peers had a Caroline, as lax as Carolines usually are. The name is an auspicious one forwomen. This dignitary, extremely old at the time, was on one side ofthe fireplace, and Caroline on the other. Caroline was hard upon thelustrum when women no longer tell their age. A friend came in toinform them of the marriage of a general who had lately been intimatein their house. 

Caroline at once had a fit of despair, with genuine tears; shescreamed and made the grand dignitary's head ache to such a degree, that he tried to console her. In the midst of his condolences, thecount forgot himself so far as to say--"What can you expect, my dear, he really could not marry you!"

And this was one of the highest functionaries of the state, but afriend of Louis XVIII, and necessarily a little bit Pompadour. 

The whole difference, then, between the situation of Adolphe and thatof Caroline, consists in this: though he no longer cares about her, she retains the right to care about him. 

Now, let us listen to "What _they_ say, " the theme of the concludingchapter of this work. 

 COMMENTARY. 

 IN WHICH IS EXPLAINED LA FELICITA OF FINALES. 

Who has not heard an Italian opera in the course of his life? You mustthen have noticed the musical abuse of the word _felicita_, solavishly used by the librettist and the chorus at the moment wheneverybody is deserting his box or leaving the house. 

Frightful image of life. We quit it just when we hear _la felicita_. 

Have you reflected upon the profound truth conveyed by this finale, atthe instant when the composer delivers his last note and the authorhis last line, when the orchestra gives the last pull at thefiddle-bow and the last puff at the bassoon, when the principal singerssay "Let's go to supper!" and the chorus people exclaim "How lucky, itdoesn't rain!" Well, in every condition in life, as in an Italianopera, there comes a time when the joke is over, when the trick isdone, when people must make up their minds to one thing or the other, when everybody is singing his own _felicita_ for himself. After havinggone through with all the duos, the solos, the stretti, the codas, theconcerted pieces, the duettos, the nocturnes, the phases which thesefew scenes, chosen from the ocean of married life, exhibit you, andwhich are themes whose variations have doubtless been divined bypersons with brains as well as by the shallow--for so far as sufferingis concerned, we are all equal--the greater part of Parisianhouseholds reach, without a given time, the following final chorus:

THE WIFE, _to a young woman in the conjugal Indian Summer_. My dear, Iam the happiest woman in the world. Adolphe is the model of husbands, kind, obliging, not a bit of a tease. Isn't he, Ferdinand?

Caroline addresses Adolphe's cousin, a young man with a nice cravat, glistening hair and patent leather boots: his coat is cut in the mostelegant fashion: he has a crush hat, kid gloves, something very choicein the way of a waistcoat, the very best style of moustaches, whiskers, and a goatee a la Mazarin; he is also endowed with aprofound, mute, attentive admiration of Caroline. 

FERDINAND. Adolphe is happy to have a wife like you! What does hewant? Nothing. 

THE WIFE. In the beginning, we were always vexing each other: but nowwe get along marvelously. Adolphe no longer does anything but what helikes, he never puts himself out: I never ask him where he is goingnor what he has seen. Indulgence, my dear, is the great secret ofhappiness. You, doubtless, are still in the period of petty troubles, causeless jealousies, cross-purposes, and all sorts of littlebotherations. What is the good of all this? We women have but a shortlife, at the best. How much? Ten good years! Why should we fill themwith vexation? I was like you. But, one fine morning, I made theacquaintance of Madame de Fischtaminel, a charming woman, who taughtme how to make a husband happy. Since then, Adolphe has changedradically; he has become perfectly delightful. He is the first to sayto me, with anxiety, with alarm, even, when I am going to the theatre, and he and I are still alone at seven o'clock: "Ferdinand is comingfor you, isn't he?" Doesn't he, Ferdinand?

FERDINAND. We are the best cousins in the world. 

THE INDIAN SUMMER WIFE, _very much affected_. Shall I ever come tothat?

THE HUSBAND, _on the Italian Boulevard_. My dear boy [he hasbutton-holed Monsieur de Fischtaminel], you still believe that marriageis based upon passion. Let me tell you that the best way, in conjugallife, is to have a plenary indulgence, one for the other, on conditionthat appearances be preserved. I am the happiest husband in the world. Caroline is a devoted friend, she would sacrifice everything for me, even my cousin Ferdinand, if it were necessary: oh, you may laugh, butshe is ready to do anything. You entangle yourself in your laughableideas of dignity, honor, virtue, social order. We can't have our lifeover again, so we must cram it full of pleasure. Not the smallestbitter word has been exchanged between Caroline and me for two yearspast. I have, in Caroline, a friend to whom I can tell everything, andwho would be amply able to console me in a great emergency. There isnot the slightest deceit between us, and we know perfectly well whatthe state of things is. We have thus changed our duties intopleasures. We are often happier, thus, than in that insipid seasoncalled the honey-moon. She says to me, sometimes, "I'm out of humor, go away. " The storm then falls upon my cousin. Caroline never puts onher airs of a victim, now, but speaks in the kindest manner of me tothe whole world. In short, she is happy in my pleasures. And as she isa scrupulously honest woman, she is conscientious to the last degreein her use of our fortune. My house is well kept. My wife leaves methe right to dispose of my reserve without the slightest control onher part. That's the way of it. We have oiled our wheels and cogs, while you, my dear Fischtaminel, have put gravel in yours. 

CHORUS, _in a parlor during a ball_. Madame Caroline is a charmingwoman. 

A WOMAN IN A TURBAN. Yes, she is very proper, very dignified. 

A WOMAN WHO HAS SEVEN CHILDREN. Ah! she learned early how to manageher husband. 

ONE OF FERDINAND'S FRIENDS. But she loves her husband exceedingly. Besides, Adolphe is a man of great distinction and experience. 

ONE OF MADAME DE FISCHTAMINEL'S FRIENDS. He adores his wife. There'sno fuss at their house, everybody is at home there. 

MONSIEUR FOULLEPOINTE. Yes, it's a very agreeable house. 

A WOMAN ABOUT WHOM THERE IS A GOOD DEAL OF SCANDAL. Caroline is kindand obliging, and never talks scandal of anybody. 

A YOUNG LADY, _returning to her place after a dance_. Don't youremember how tiresome she was when she visited the Deschars?

MADAME DE FISCHTAMINEL. Oh! She and her husband were two bundles ofbriars--continually quarreling. [She goes away. ]

AN ARTIST. I hear that the individual known as Deschars is gettingdissipated: he goes round town--

A WOMAN, _alarmed at the turn the conversation is taking, as herdaughter can hear_. Madame de Fischtaminel is charming, this evening. 

A WOMAN OF FORTY, _without employment_. Monsieur Adolphe appears to beas happy as his wife. 

A YOUNG LADY. Oh! what a sweet man Monsieur Ferdinand is! [Her motherreproves her by a sharp nudge with her foot. ] What's the matter, mamma?

HER MOTHER, _looking at her fixedly_. A young woman should not speakso, my dear, of any one but her betrothed, and Monsieur Ferdinand isnot a marrying man. 

A LADY DRESSED RATHER LOW IN THE NECK, _to another lady dressedequally low, in a whisper_. The fact is, my dear, the moral of allthis is that there are no happy couples but couples of four. 

A FRIEND, _whom the author was so imprudent as to consult_. Those lastwords are false. 

THE AUTHOR. Do you think so?

THE FRIEND, _who has just been married_. You all of you use your inkin depreciating social life, on the pretext of enlightening us! Why, there are couples a hundred, a thousand times happier than yourboasted couples of four. 

THE AUTHOR. Well, shall I deceive the marrying class of thepopulation, and scratch the passage out?

THE FRIEND. No, it will be taken merely as the point of a song in avaudeville. 

THE AUTHOR. Yes, a method of passing truths off upon society. 

THE FRIEND, _who sticks to his opinion_. Such truths as are destinedto be passed off upon it. 

THE AUTHOR, _who wants to have the last word_. Who and what is therethat does not pass off, or become passe? When your wife is twentyyears older, we will resume this conversation. 

THE FRIEND. You revenge yourself cruelly for your inability to writethe history of happy homes.