Women are either chaste—or vain—or simply proud. They are therefore all subject to the following petty trouble:
Certain husbands are so delighted to have, in the form of a wife, a woman to themselves,—a possession exclusively due to the legal ceremony,—that they dread the public's making a mistake, and they hasten to brand their consort, as lumber-dealers brand their logs while floating down stream, or as the Berry stock-raisers brand their sheep. They bestow names of endearment, right before people, upon their wives: names taken, after the Roman fashion (columbella), from the animal kingdom, as: my chick, my duck, my dove, my lamb; or, choosing from the vegetable kingdom, they call them: my cabbage, my fig (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 is very young.
Some venture upon names of doubtful propriety, such as: Mon bichon, ma niniche, Tronquette!
We once heard one of our politicians, a man extremely remarkable for his ugliness, call his wife,Moumoutte!
"I would rather he would strike me," said this unfortunate to her neighbor.
"Poor little woman, she is really unhappy," resumed the neighbor, looking at me when Moumoutte had gone: "when she is in company with her 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-poisoning with arsenic, was nothing less than a series of constant indiscretions like these that the wife had to bear in society. This husband used to give the woman he had won at the point of the Code, public little taps on her shoulder, he would startle her by a resounding kiss, he dishonored her by a conspicuous tenderness, seasoned by those impertinent attentions the secret of which belongs to the French savages who dwell in the depths of the provinces, and whose manners are very little known, despite the efforts of the realists in fiction. It was, it is said, this shocking situation,—one perfectly appreciated by a discerning jury,—which won the prisoner a verdict softened by the extenuating circumstances.
The jurymen said to themselves:
"For a wife to murder her husband for these conjugal offences, is certainly going rather far; but then a woman is very excusable, when she is so harassed!"
We deeply regret, in the interest of elegant manners, that these arguments are not more generally known. Heaven grant, therefore, that our book may have an immense success, as women will obtain this advantage 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 of indiscreet sayings and doings. There are some women that seek them, fish for them, and woe to the man who does not now and then commit one!
What passion lies in an accidentalthou!
Out in the country I heard a husband call his wife: "Ma berline!" She was delighted with it, and saw nothing ridiculous in it: she called her husband, "Mon fiston!" This delicious couple were ignorant of the existence of such things as petty troubles.
It was in observing this happy pair that the author discovered this axiom:
Axiom:—In order to be happy in wedlock, you must either be a man of genius married to an affectionate and intellectual woman, or, by a chance which is not as common as might be supposed, you must both of you be exceedingly stupid.
The too celebrated history of the cure of a wounded self-love by arsenic, proves that, properly speaking, there are no petty troubles for 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 great misfortune, or a wasted life, or an eternal misery. Should Caroline begin, in her ignorance of life and the world, by inflicting upon her husband the vexations of her stupidity (re-read REVELATIONS), Adolphe, like any other man, may find a compensation in social excitement: he goes out, comes back, goes here and there, has business. But for Caroline, the question everywhere is, To love or not to love, to be or not 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-made and repulsive. There are men, and often rich ones, too, who, by a sort of unobserved constitution, soil a new suit of clothes in twenty-four hours. They were born disgusting. It is so disgraceful for a women to be anything more than just simply a wife to this sort of Adolphe, that a certain Caroline had long ago insisted upon the suppression of the moderntheeandthouand all other insignia of the wifely dignity. Society had been for five or six years accustomed to this sort of thing, and supposed Madame and Monsieur completely separated, and all the 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 his wife: "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 de Fischtaminel's, narrated this little scene with all the spirit at his command, and Madame de Fischtaminel put on an air something like Celimene's and said: "Poor creature, what an extremity she must be in!"
I say nothing of Caroline's confusion,—you have already divined it.
Here is the second. Think of the frightful situation in which a lady of great refinement was lately placed: she was conversing agreeably at her country seat near Paris, when her husband's servant came and whispered in her ear, "Monsieur has come, madame."
"Very well, Benoit."
Everybody had heard the rumblings of the vehicle. It was known that the husband had been at Paris since Monday, and this took place on Saturday, 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 perfectly understood, and all the more so from the fact that the lady of the house turned from the pale hue of the Bengal rose to the brilliant crimson of the wheatfield poppy. She nodded and went on with the conversation, and managed to leave her company on the pretext of learning whether her husband had succeeded in an important undertaking or not: but she seemed plainly vexed at Adolphe's want of consideration for the company who were visiting her.
During their youth, women want to be treated as divinities, they love the ideal; they cannot bear the idea of being what nature intended them to be.
Some husbands, on retiring to the country, after a week in town, are worse than this: they bow to the company, put their arm round their wife's waist, take a little walk with her, appear to be talking confidentially, disappear in a clump of trees, get lost, and reappear half an hour afterward.
This, ladies, is a genuine petty trouble for a young woman, but for a woman beyond forty, this sort of indiscretion is so delightful, that the greatest prudes are flattered by it, for, be it known:
That women of a certain age, women on the shady side, want to be treated as mortals, they love the actual; they cannot bear the idea of no longer being what nature intended them to be.
Axiom.—Modesty is a relative virtue; there is the modesty of the woman 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 too conspicuous, while her daughter was trying to conceal her Ferdinand I.
FIRST STYLE. Caroline adores Adolphe, she thinks him handsome, she thinks him superb, especially in his National Guard uniform. She starts when a sentinel presents arms to him, she considers him moulded like a model, she regards him as a man of wit, everything he does is right, nobody has better taste than he, in short, she is crazy about Adolphe.
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 has been the same old bandage since the days of Greece.
Caroline is at a ball with one of her young friends. A man well known for his bluntness, whose acquaintance she is to make later in life, but whom she now sees for the first time, Monsieur Foullepointe, has commenced a conversation with Caroline's friend. According to the custom of society, Caroline listens to this conversation without mingling in it.
"Pray tell me, madame," says Monsieur Foullepointe, "who is that queer man who has been talking about the Court of Assizes before a gentleman whose acquittal lately created such a sensation: he is all the while blundering, like an ox in a bog, against everybody's sore spot. A lady burst into tears at hearing him tell of the death of a child, as she lost her own two months ago."
"Who do you mean?"
"Why, that fat man, dressed like a waiter in a cafe, frizzled like a barber's apprentice, there, he's trying now to make himself agreeable to Madame de Fischtaminel."
"Hush," whispers the lady quite alarmed, "it's the husband of the little 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 going to make his acquaintance immediately."
And Foullepointe executes his retreat, leaving a bitter suspicion in Caroline's soul, as to the question whether her husband is really as handsome as she thinks him.
SECOND STYLE. Caroline, annoyed by the reputation of Madame Schinner, who is credited with the possession of epistolary talents, and styled the "Sevigne of the note", tired of hearing about Madame de Fischtaminel, who has ventured to write a little 32mo book on the education of the young, in which she has boldly reprinted Fenelon, without the style:—Caroline has been working for six months upon a tale tenfold poorer than those of Berquin, nauseatingly moral, and flamboyant in style.
After numerous intrigues such as women are skillful in managing in the interest of their vanity, and the tenacity and perfection of which would lead you to believe that they have a third sex in their head, this tale, entitled "The Lotus," appears in three installments in a leading daily paper. It is signed Samuel Crux.
When Adolphe takes up the paper at breakfast, Caroline's heart beats up in her very throat: she blushes, turns pale, looks away and stares at the ceiling. When Adolphe's eyes settle upon the feuilleton, she can bear it no longer: she gets up, goes out, comes back, having replenished her stock of audacity, no one knows where.
"Is there a feuilleton this morning?" she asks with an air that she thinks indifferent, but which would disturb a husband still jealous of his 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 he could 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 paid Chodoreille five or six hundred francs to insert it; or else it's the production of a blue-stocking in high society who has promised to invite Madame Chodoreille to her house; or perhaps it's the work of a woman in whom the editor is personally interested. Such a piece of stupidity cannot be explained any other way. Imagine, Caroline, that it's all about a little flower picked on the edge of a wood in a sentimental walk, which a gentleman of the Werther school has sworn to keep, which he has had framed, and which the lady claims again eleven years after (the poor man has had time to change his lodgings three times). It's quite new, about as old as Sterne or Gessner. What makes me think it's a woman, is that the first literary idea of the whole sex is to take vengeance on some one."
Adolphe might go on pulling "The Lotus" to pieces; Caroline's ears are full of the tinkling of bells. She is like the woman who threw herself over the Pont des Arts, and tried to find her way ten feet below the level of the Seine.
ANOTHER STYLE. Caroline, in her paroxysms of jealousy, has discovered a hiding place used by Adolphe, who, as he can't trust his wife, and as he knows she opens his letters and rummages in his drawers, has endeavored to save his correspondence with Hector from the hooked fingers 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 of which has been embroidered by Caroline, the ground being blue, black or red velvet,—the color, as you see, is perfectly immaterial,—and he slips his unfinished letters to Madame de Fischtaminel, to his friend Hector, between the table and the cloth.
The thickness of a sheet of paper is almost nothing, velvet is a downy, discreet material, but, no matter, these precautions are in vain. The male devil is fairly matched by the female devil: Tophet will furnish them of all genders. Caroline has Mephistopheles on her side, the demon who causes tables to spurt forth fire, and who, with his ironic finger points out the hiding place of keys—the secret of secrets.
Caroline has noticed the thickness of a letter sheet between this velvet and this table: she hits upon a letter to Hector instead of hitting upon one to Madame de Fischtaminel, who has gone to Plombieres Springs, and reads the following:
"My dear Hector:
"I pity you, but you have acted wisely in entrusting me with a knowledge of the difficulties in which you have voluntarily involved yourself. You never would see the difference between the country woman and the woman of Paris. In the country, my dear boy, you are always face to face with your wife, and, owing to the ennui which impels you, you rush headforemost into the enjoyment of your bliss. This is a great error: happiness is an abyss, and when you have once reached the bottom, you never get back again, in wedlock.
"I will show you why. Let me take, for your wife's sake, the shortest path—the parable.
"I remember having made a journey from Paris to Ville-Parisis, in that vehicle called a 'bus: distance, twenty miles: 'bus, lumbering: horse, lame. Nothing amuses me more than to draw from people, by the aid of that gimlet called the interrogation, and to obtain, by means of an attentive air, the sum of information, anecdotes and learning that everybody is anxious to part with: and all men have such a sum, the peasant as well as the banker, the corporal as well as the marshal of France.
"I have often noticed how ready these casks, overflowing with wit, are to open their sluices while being transported by diligence or 'bus, or by 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 seven hours: so I got an old corporal to talk, for my diversion. He could neither read nor write: he was entirely illiterate. Yet the journey seemed short. The corporal had been through all the campaigns, he told me of things perfectly unheard of, that historians never trouble themselves about.
"Ah! Hector, how superior is practice to theory! Among other things, and in reply to a question relative to the infantry, whose courage is much more tried by marching than by fighting, he said this, which I give you free from circumlocution:
"'Sir, when Parisians were brought to our 45th, which Napoleon called The Terrible (I am speaking of the early days of the Empire, when the infantry had legs of steel, and when they needed them), I had a way of telling beforehand which of them would remain in the 45th. They marched without hurrying, they did their little six leagues a day, neither more nor less, and they pitched camp in condition to begin again on the morrow. The plucky fellows who did ten leagues and wanted to run to the victory, stopped half way at the hospital.'
"The worthy corporal was talking of marriage while he thought he was talking of war, and you have stopped half way, Hector, at the hospital.
"Remember the sympathetic condolence of Madame de Sevigne counting out three hundred thousand francs to Monsieur de Grignan, to induce him to marry one of the prettiest girls in France! 'Why,' said she to herself, '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 not enough 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 strictest observance of that salutary principle so strongly insisted upon in thePhysiology of Marriage. I have resolved to lead my wife through paths beaten in the snow, until the happy day when infidelity will be difficult.
"In the situation in which you have placed yourself, and which resembles that of Duprez, who, on his first appearance at Paris, went to singing with all the voice his lungs would yield, instead of imitating 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 the same time wondering how she would make her dear Adolphe expiate his obedience to the execrable precepts of thePhysiology of Marriage.
This trouble doubtless occurs sufficiently often and in different ways enough in the existence of married women, for this personal incident to become the type of the genus.
The Caroline in question here is very pious, she loves her husband very much, her husband asserts that she loves him too much, even: but this is a piece of marital conceit, if, indeed, it is not a provocation, as he only complains to his wife's young lady friends.
When a person's conscience is involved, the least thing becomes exceedingly serious. Madame de ——- has told her young friend, Madame de Fischtaminel, that she had been compelled to make an extraordinary confession to her spiritual director, and to perform penance, the director having decided that she was in a state of mortal sin. This lady, who goes to mass every morning, is a woman of thirty-six years, thin and slightly pimpled. She has large soft black eyes, her upper lip 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 asserts that these qualities, in this Caroline of the Pious Sort, are a victory 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 two months, in April, immediately after the forty days' fast that Caroline scrupulously observes. Early in June, therefore, madame expected her husband, 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, which had now reached a state of paroxysm, told her that the longed-for husband would arrive at an early hour.
When a pious woman expects her husband, and that husband has been absent from home nearly four months, she takes much more pains with her toilet than a young girl does, though waiting for her first betrothed.
This virtuous Caroline was so completely absorbed in exclusively personal preparations, that she forgot to go to eight o'clock mass. She proposed to hear a low mass, but she was afraid of losing the delight of her dear Adolphe's first glance, in case he arrived at early dawn. Her chambermaid—who respectfully left her mistress alone in the dressing-room where pious and pimpled ladies let no one enter, not even their husbands, especially if they are thin—her chambermaid heard her exclaim several times, "If it's your master, let me know!"
The rumbling of a vehicle having made the furniture rattle, Caroline assumed a mild tone to conceal the violence of her legitimate emotions.
"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, for she was engaged in dressing. The chambermaid's nose had already been the recipient of a superb muslin chemise, with a simple hem, which Caroline had thrown at her from the dressing-room, though she had given her the same kind for the last three months.
"What are you thinking of, Justine? I told you to choose from the chemises that are not numbered."
The unnumbered chemises were only seven or eight, in the most magnificent trousseau. They are chemises gotten up and embroidered with the greatest care: a woman must be a queen, a young queen, to have a dozen. Each one of Caroline's was trimmed with valenciennes round the bottom, and still more coquettishly garnished about the neck. This feature of our manners will perhaps serve to suggest a suspicion, in the masculine world, of the domestic drama revealed by this exceptional chemise.
Caroline had put on a pair of Scotch thread stockings, little prunella buskins, and her most deceptive corsets. She had her hair dressed in the fashion that most became her, and embellished it with a cap of the most elegant form. It is unnecessary to speak of her morning gown. A pious lady who lives at Paris and who loves her husband, knows as well as a coquette how to choose those pretty little striped patterns, have them cut with an open waist, and fastened by loops to buttons in a way which compels her to refasten them two or three times in an hour, with little airs more or less charming, as the case may be.
The nine o'clock mass, the ten o'clock mass, every mass, went by in these preparations, which, for women in love, are one of their twelve labors 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, a person ought not to appear haughty in the place where it is becoming to be humble. Caroline was afraid to compromise the freshness of her dress and the purity of her thread stockings. Alas! these pretexts concealed a reason.
"If I am at church when Adolphe comes, I shall lose the pleasure of his 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—a fearfully worldly consideration. Prefer the creature to the Creator! A husband to heaven! Go and hear a sermon and you will learn what such an offence will cost you.
"After all," says Caroline, quoting her confessor, "society is founded upon marriage, which the Church has included among its sacraments."
And this is the way in which religious instruction may be put aside in favor of a blind though legitimate love. Madame refused breakfast, and ordered the meal to be kept hot, just as she kept herself ready, at a moment's notice, to welcome the precious absentee.
Now these little things may easily excite a laugh: but in the first place they are continually occurring with couples who love each other, or where one of them loves the other: besides, in a woman so strait-laced, so reserved, so worthy, as this lady, these acknowledgments of affection went beyond the limits imposed upon her feelings by the lofty self-respect which true piety induces. When Madame de Fischtaminel narrated this little scene in a devotee's life, dressing it up with choice by-play, acted out as ladies of the world know how to act out their anecdotes, I took the liberty of saying that it was the Canticle of canticles in action.
"If her husband doesn't come," said Justine to the cook, "what will become of us? She has already thrown her chemise in my face."
At last, Caroline heard the crack of a postilion's whip, the well-known rumbling of a traveling carriage, the racket made by the hoofs of post-horses, and the jingling of their bells! Oh, she could doubt no longer, the bells made her burst forth, as thus:
"The door! Open the door! 'Tis he, my husband! Will you never go to the door!" And the pious woman stamped her foot and broke the bell-rope.
"Why, madame," said Justine, with the vivacity of a servant doing her duty, "it's some people going away."
"Upon my word," replied Caroline, half ashamed, to herself, "I will never 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 the dinner hour, he waited patiently five minutes: at the tenth minute, he felt a desire to throw the napkin in his face: at the twelfth he hoped some great calamity would befall him: at the fifteenth, he would not be able to restrain himself from stabbing him several times with a dirk.
All women, when expecting somebody, are Marseilles poets, if, indeed, we may compare the vulgar throes of hunger to the sublime Canticle of canticles of a pious wife, who is hoping for the joys of a husband's first glance after a three months' absence. Let all those who love and who have met again after an absence ten thousand times accursed, be good enough to recall their first glance: it says so many things that the lovers, if in the presence of a third party, are fain to lower their eyes! This poem, in which every man is as great as Homer, in which he seems a god to the woman who loves him, is, for a pious, thin and pimpled lady, all the more immense, from the fact that she has not, like Madame de Fischtaminel, the resource of having several copies of it. In her case, her husband is all she's got!
So you will not be surprised to learn that Caroline missed every mass and had no breakfast. This hunger and thirst for Adolphe gave her a violent cramp in the stomach. She did not think of religion once during the hours of mass, nor during those of vespers. She was not comfortable when she sat, and she was very uncomfortable when she stood: Justine advised her to go to bed. Caroline, quite overcome, retired at about half past five in the evening, after having taken a light 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, internally fulminated. She had reached the Marseilles poet's several stabs with a dirk. So she spoke in a tone that was really terrible. At three in the morning Caroline was in a profound sleep: Adolphe arrived without her hearing either carriage, or horse, or bell, or opening door!
Adolphe, who would not permit her to be disturbed, went to bed in the spare room. When Caroline heard of his return in the morning, two tears issued from her eyes; she rushed to the spare room without the slightest preparatory toilet; a hideous attendant, posted on the threshold, informed her that her husband, having traveled two hundred leagues and been two nights without sleep, requested that he might not be awakened: he was exceedingly tired.
Caroline—pious woman that she was—opened the door violently without being able to wake the only husband that heaven had given her, and then hastened to church to listen to a thanksgiving mass.
As she was visibly snappish for three whole days, Justine remarked, in reply 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.
Put yourself in the place of a poor woman of doubtful beauty, who owes her husband to the weight of her dowry, who gives herself infinite pains, and spends a great deal of money to appear to advantage and follow the fashions, who does her best to keep house sumptuously and yet economically—a house, too, not easy to manage—who, from morality and dire necessity, perhaps, loves no one but her husband, who has no other study but the happiness of this precious husband, who, to express all in one word, joins the maternal sentimentto the sentiment of her duties. This underlined circumlocution is the paraphrase of the word love in the language of prudes.
Have you put yourself in her place? Well, this too-much-loved husband by chance remarked at his friend Monsieur de Fischtaminel's, that he was very fond of mushroomsa 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 there is no greater pleasure than that of seeing the beloved one absorbing his favorite viands. This springs from the fundamental idea upon which the affection of women is based: that of being the source of all his pleasures, big and little. Love animates everything in life, and conjugal love has a peculiar right to descend to the most trivial details.
Caroline spends two or three days in inquiries before she learns how the Italians dress mushrooms. She discovers a Corsican abbe who tells her that at Biffi's, in the rue de Richelieu, she will not only learn how the Italians dress mushrooms, but that she will be able to obtain some 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 exhibits to 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, except how a cook may feather his nest.
At evening, during the second course, all Caroline's fibres quiver with pleasure at observing the servant bringing to the table a certain suggestive dish. She has positively waited for this dinner as she had waited 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 a woman who adores her husband among the elect—there is, between these two worlds of expectation, the difference that exists between a fine night and a fine day.
The dish is presented to the beloved Adolphe, he carelessly plunges his spoon in and helps himself, without perceiving Caroline's extreme emotion, to several of those soft, fat, round things, that travelers who visit Milan do not for a long time recognize; they take them for some kind of shell-fish.
"Well, Adolphe?"
"Well, dear."
"Don't you recognize them?"
"Recognize what?"
"Your mushroomsa l'Italienne?"
"These mushrooms! I thought they were—well, yes, theyaremushrooms!"
"Yes, anda l'Italienne, too."
"Pooh, they are old preserved mushrooms,a la milanaise. I abominate them!"
"What kind is it you like, then?"
"Fungi trifolati."
Let us observe—to the disgrace of an epoch which numbers and labels everything, which puts the whole creation in bottles, which is at this moment classifying one hundred and fifty thousand species of insects, giving them all the terminationus, so that aSilbermanusis the same individual in all countries for the learned men who dissect a butterfly's legs with pincers—that we still want a nomenclature for the chemistry of the kitchen, to enable all the cooks in the world to produce precisely similar dishes. It would be diplomatically agreed that French should be the language of the kitchen, as Latin has been adopted by the scientific for botany and entomology, unless it were desired to imitate them in that, too, and thus really have kitchen Latin.
"My dear," resumes Adolphe, on seeing the clouded and lengthened face of his chaste Caroline, "in France the dish in question is called Mushroomsa l'Italienne, a la provencale, a la bordelaise. The mushrooms are minced, fried in oil with a few ingredients whose names I have forgotten. You add a taste of garlic, I believe—"
Talk about calamities, of petty troubles! This, do you see, is, to a woman's heart, what the pain of an extracted tooth is to a child of eight.Ab uno disce omnes: which means, "There's one of them: find the rest in your memory." For we have taken this culinary description as a prototype of the vexations which afflict loving but indifferently loved women.
A woman full of faith in the man she loves is a romancer's fancy. This feminine personage no more exists than does a rich dowry. A woman's confidence glows perhaps for a few moments, at the dawn of love, and disappears in a trice like a shooting star.
With women who are neither Dutch, nor English, nor Belgian, nor from any marshy country, love is a pretext for suffering, an employment for the superabundant powers of their imaginations and their nerves.
Thus the second idea that takes possession of a happy woman, one who is really loved, is the fear of losing her happiness, for we must do her the justice to say that her first idea is to enjoy it. All who possess treasures are in dread of thieves, but they do not, like women, lend wings and feet to their golden stores.
The little blue flower of perfect felicity is not so common, that the heaven-blessed man who possesses it, should be simpleton enough to abandon it.
Axiom.—A woman is never deserted without a reason.
This axiom is written in the heart of hearts of every woman. Hence the rage of a woman deserted.
Let us not infringe upon the petty troubles of love: we live in a calculating epoch when women are seldom abandoned, do what they may: for, of all wives or women, nowadays, the legitimate is the least expensive. Now, every woman who is loved, has gone through the petty annoyance of suspicion. This suspicion, whether just or unjust, engenders a multitude of domestic troubles, and here is the biggest of all.
Caroline is one day led to notice that her cherished Adolphe leaves her rather too often upon a matter of business, that eternal Chaumontel'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 business than publishers and managers do in the illness of actresses and authors. The moment a beloved creature absents himself, though she has rendered him even too happy, every woman straightway imagines that he has hurried away to some easy conquest. In this respect, women endow men with superhuman faculties. Fear magnifies everything, it dilates the eyes and the heart: it makes a woman mad.
"Where is my husband going? What is my husband doing? Why has he left me? Why did he not take me with him?"
These four questions are the four cardinal points of the compass of suspicion, and govern the stormy sea of soliloquies. From these frightful tempests which ravage a woman's heart springs an ignoble, unworthy resolution, one which every woman, the duchess as well as the shopkeeper's wife, the baroness as well as the stockbroker's lady, the angel as well as the shrew, the indifferent as well as the passionate, at once puts into execution. They imitate the government, every one of them; they resort to espionage. What the State has invented in the public interest, they consider legal, legitimate and permissible, in the interest of their love. This fatal woman's curiosity reduces them to the necessity of having agents, and the agent of any woman who, in this situation, has not lost her self-respect,—a situation in which her jealousy will not permit her to respect anything: neither your little boxes, nor your clothes, nor the drawers of your treasury, of your desk, of your table, of your bureau, nor your pocketbook with private compartments, nor your papers, nor your traveling dressing-case, nor your toilet articles (a woman discovers in this way that her husband dyed his moustache when he was a bachelor), nor your india-rubber girdles—her agent, I say, the only one in whom a woman trusts, is her maid, for her maid understands her, excuses her, and approves her.
In the paroxysm of excited curiosity, passion and jealousy, a woman makes no calculations, takes no observations. She simply wishes to know the whole truth.
And Justine is delighted: she sees her mistress compromising herself with her, and she espouses her passion, her dread, her fears and her suspicions, with terrible friendship. Justine and Caroline hold councils and have secret interviews. All espionage involves such relationships. In this pass, a maid becomes the arbitress of the fate of the married couple. Example: Lord Byron.
"Madame," Justine one day observes, "monsieur reallydoesgo out to see 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 his secret from everybody, even from Benoit."
For a week Caroline lives the life of the damned; all her savings go to 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 a witness of his youthful follies, a nice little boy that looks very much like him, and that this woman is his nurse, the second-hand mother who has charge of little Frederick, who pays his quarterly school-bills, and through whose hands pass the twelve hundred or two thousand 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 that M'lle Suzanne Beauminet, formerly a grisette and somewhat later Madame Sainte-Suzanne, died at the hospital, or else that she has made her fortune, or else, again, that her place in society is so low there is no danger of madame's ever meeting her.
Caroline breathes again: the dirk has been drawn from her heart, she is quite happy; but she had no children but daughters, and would like a boy. This little drama of unjust suspicions, this comedy of the conjectures to which Mother Mahuchet gives rise, these phases of a causeless jealousy, are laid down here as the type of a situation, the varieties of which are as innumerable as characters, grades and sorts.
This source of petty troubles is pointed out here, in order that women seated upon the river's bank may contemplate in it the course of their own married life, following its ascent or descent, recalling their own adventures to mind, their untold disasters, the foibles which caused their errors, and the peculiar fatalities to which were due an instant of frenzy, a moment of unnecessary despair, or sufferings which they might have spared themselves, happy in their self-delusions.
This vexation has a corollary in the following, one which is much more serious and often without remedy, especially when its root lies among vices of another kind, and which do not concern us, for, in this work, women are invariably esteemed honest—until the end.
"My dear Caroline," says Adolphe one day to his wife, "are you satisfied 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 seemsyounotice her!"
"What do you say?" asks Adolphe in an indignant way that is always delightful to women.
Justine is a genuine maid for an actress, a woman of thirty stamped by the small-pox with innumerable dimples, in which the loves are far from sporting: she is as brown as opium, has a good deal of leg and not much body, gummy eyes, and a tournure to match. She would like to have Benoit marry her, but at this unexpected suggestion, Benoit asked for his discharge. Such is the portrait of the domestic tyrant enthroned by Caroline's jealousy.
Justine takes her coffee in the morning, in bed, and manages to have it as good as, not to say better than, that of her mistress. Justine sometimes goes out without asking leave, dressed like the wife of a second-class banker. She sports a pink hat, one of her mistress' old gowns made over, an elegant shawl, shoes of bronze kid, and jewelry of doubtful character.
Justine is sometimes in a bad humor, and makes her mistress feel that she too is a woman like herself, though she is not married. She has her whims, her fits of melancholy, her caprices. She even dares to have her nerves! She replies curtly, she makes herself insupportable to the other servants, and, to conclude, her wages have been considerably increased.
"My dear, this girl is getting more intolerable every day," says Adolphe one morning to his wife, on noticing Justine listening at the key-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 high wages, 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 so attached to madame! Ah! she would rush into the fire for her: she would let herself be chopped into mince-meat: she is ready for anything.
"If you had anything to conceal, madame, I would take it on myself and say 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 old curmudgeon!"
A week after, Justine, who is dressing her mistress' hair, looks in the glass to make sure that Caroline can see all the grimaces of her countenance: and Caroline very soon inquires, "Why, what's the matter, Justine?"
"I would tell you, readily, madame, but then, madame, you are so weak with monsieur!"
"Come, go on, what is it?"
"I know now, madame, why master wanted to show me the door: he has confidence in nobody but Benoit, and Benoit is playing the mum with me."
"Well, what does that prove? Has anything been discovered?"
"I'm sure that between the two they are plotting something against you madame," returns the maid with authority.
Caroline, whom Justine watches in the glass, turns pale: all the tortures of the previous petty trouble return, and Justine sees that she has become as indispensable to her mistress as spies are to the government when a conspiracy is discovered. Still, Caroline's friends do not understand why she keeps so disagreeable a servant girl, one who wears a hat, whose manners are impertinent, and who gives herself the airs of a lady.
This stupid domination is talked of at Madame Deschars', at Madame de Fischtaminel's, and the company consider it funny. A few ladies think they can see certain monstrous reasons for it, reasons which compromise Caroline's honor.
Axiom.—In society, people can put cloaks on every kind of truth, even the prettiest.
In short thearia della calumniais 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 this enigma. Madame de Fischtaminel makes fun of Adolphe who goes home in a rage, has a scene with Caroline and discharges Justine.
This produces such an effect upon Justine, that she falls sick, and takes to her bed. Caroline observes to her husband, that it would be awkward to turn a girl in Justine's condition into the street, a girl who is so much attached to them, too, and who has been with them sine their 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:
One morning, Adolphe is petted in a very unusual manner. The too happy husband wonders what may be the cause of this development of affection, and he hears Caroline, in her most winning tones, utter the word: "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 was you 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, her style of conduct exposes your reputation—"
"What can people say—what have they said?"
The scene changes, the result of which is a secondary explanation which makes Caroline blush, as she sees the bearing of the suppositions of her best friends.
"Well, now, Adolphe, it's to you I owe all this. Why didn't you tell me about Frederick?"
"Frederick the Great? The King of Prussia?"
"What creatures men are! Hypocrite, do you want to make me believe that you have forgotten your son so soon, M'lle Suzanne Beauminet's son?"
"Then you know—?"
"The whole thing! And old other Mahuchet, and your absences from home to 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 spying system, which was produced by my love for you, for I do love you, and madly too,—if you deceived me, I would fly to the extremity of creation,—well, as I was going to say, this unfounded jealousy has put me in Justine's power, so, my precious, get me out of it the best way you can!"
"Let this teach you, my angel, never to make use of your servants, if you want them to be of use to you. It is the lowest of tyrannies, this being at the mercy of one's people."
Adolphe takes advantage of this circumstance to alarm Caroline, he thinks of future Chaumontel's affairs, and would be glad to have no more espionage.
Justine is sent for, Adolphe peremptorily dismisses her without waiting to hear her explanation. Caroline imagines her vexations at an end. She gets another maid.
Justine, whose twelve or fifteen thousand francs have attracted the notice of a water carrier, becomes Madame Chavagnac, and goes into the apple business. Ten months after, in Adolphe's absence, Caroline receives a letter written upon school-boy paper, in strides which would require orthopedic treatment for three months, and thus conceived:
"Madam!
"Yu ar shaimphoolly diseeved bi yure huzban fur mame Deux fischtaminelle, hee goze their evry eavning, yu ar az blynde az a Batt. Your gott wott yu dizzurv, and I am Glad ovit, and I have thee honur ov prezenting yu the assurunz ov Mi moaste ds Sting guischt respecks."
Caroline starts like a lion who has been stung by a bumble-bee; she places herself once more, and of her own accord, upon the griddle of suspicion, and begins her struggle with the unknown all over again.
When she has discovered the injustice of her suspicions, there comes another letter with an offer to furnish her with details relative to a Chaumontel'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.
To the glory of women, let it be said, they care for their husbands even when their husbands care no more for them, not only because there are more ties, socially speaking, between a married woman and a man, than between the man and the wife; but also because woman has more delicacy and honor than man, the chief conjugal question apart, as a matter of course.
Axiom.—In a husband, there is only a man; in a married woman, there is a man, a father, a mother and a woman.
A married woman has sensibility enough for four, or for five even, if you look closely.
Now, it is not improper to observe in this place, that, in a woman's eyes, love is a general absolution: the man who is a good lover may commit crimes, if he will, he is always as pure as snow in the eyes of her who loves him, if he truly loves her. As to a married woman, loved or not, she feels so deeply that the honor and consideration of her husband are the fortune of her children, that she acts like the woman in love,—so active is the sense of community of interest.
This profound sentiment engenders, for certain Carolines, petty troubles which, unfortunately for this book, have their dismal side.
Adolphe is compromised. We will not enumerate all the methods of compromising oneself, for we might become personal. Let us take, as an example, the social error which our epoch excuses, permits, understands and commits the most of any—the case of an honest robbery, of skillfully concealed corruption in office, or of some misrepresentation that becomes excusable when it has succeeded, as, for instance, having an understanding with parties in power, for the sale of property at the highest possible price to a city, or a country.
Thus, in a bankruptcy, Adolphe, in order to protect himself (this means to recover his claims), has become mixed up in certain unlawful doings which may bring a man to the necessity of testifying before the Court of Assizes. In fact, it is not known that the daring creditor will not be considered a party.
Take notice that in all cases of bankruptcy, protecting oneself is regarded as the most sacred of duties, even by the most respectable houses: the thing is to keep the bad side of the protection out of sight, as they do in prudish England.
Adolphe does not know what to do, as his counsel has told him not to appear in the matter: so he has recourse to Caroline. He gives her a lesson, he coaches her, he teaches her the Code, he examines her dress, he equips her as a brig sent on a voyage, and despatches her to the office of some judge, or some syndic. The judge is apparently a man of severe morality, but in reality a libertine: he retains his serious expression on seeing a pretty woman enter, and makes sundry very uncomplimentary remarks about Adolphe.
"I pity you, madame, you belong to a man who may involve you in numerous unpleasant affairs: a few more matters like this, and he will be quite disgraced. Have you any children? Excuse my asking; you are so young, it is perfectly natural." And the judge comes as near to Caroline as possible.
"Yes, sir."
"Ah, great heavens! what a prospect is yours! My first thought was for the woman, but now I pity you doubly, I think of the mother. Ah, how you 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 at Caroline. "What you ask of me is a dereliction of duty, and I am a magistrate before I am a man."
"Oh, sir, only be a man—"
"Are you aware of the full bearing of that request, fair creature?" At this point the magistrate tremblingly takes Caroline's hand.
Caroline, who remembers that the honor of her husband and children is at 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 to cause so lovely a woman to shed tears; we'll see about it. You shall come to-morrow evening and tell me the whole affair. We must look at the 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 grant what is due to justice and—" he puts on a shrewd look here—"to beauty."
"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." And he goes to the door with Caroline, who is frightened to death at an appointment thus proposed.
The syndic is a lively young man, and he receives Madame Adolphe with a smile. He smiles at everything, and he smiles as he takes her round the waist with an agility which leaves Caroline no time to resist, especially as she says to herself, "Adolphe particularly recommended me 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 the judge.
"Don't be angry with me, you are irresistible, you are an angel, and your husband is a monster: for what does he mean by sending a siren to a young man whom he knows to be inflammable!"
"Sir, my husband could not come himself; he is in bed, very sick, and you 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 profound rascality.
"He supposed, sir, that you would have pity upon the mother of a family, upon her children—"
"Ta, ta, ta," returns the syndic. "You have come to influence my independence, my conscience, you want me to give the creditors up to you: well, I'll do more, I give you up my heart, my fortune! Your husband wants to savehishonor,myhonor is at your disposal!"
"Sir," cries Caroline, as she tries to raise the syndic who has thrown himself at her feet. "You alarm me!"
She plays the terrified female and thus reaches the door, getting out of a delicate situation as women know how to do it, that is, without compromising 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 himself seated at the bar of the Court of Assizes: he is accessory to a fraudulent bankruptcy, and we know several things about him that are not by any means honorable. It is not his first departure from rectitude; he has done a good many dirty things, he has been mixed up in disgraceful intrigues, and you are singularly careful of the honor of 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 comes back.
"What do you mean, sir?" she exclaims, furious at this outrageous broadside.
"Why, this affair—"
"Chaumontel's affair?"
"No, his speculations in houses that he had built by people that were insolvent."
Caroline remembers the enterprise undertaken by Adolphe to double his income: (SeeThe Jesuitism of Women) she trembles. Her curiosity is in the syndic's favor.
"Sit down here. There, at this distance, I will behave well, but I can look at you."
And he narrates, at length, the conception due to du Tillet the banker, interrupting himself to say: "Oh, what a pretty, cunning, little foot; no one but you could have such a foot as that—Du Tillet, therefore, compromised.What an ear, too! You have been doubtless told that you had a delicious ear—And du Tillet was right, for judgment had already been given—I love small ears, but let me have a model of yours, and I will do anything you like—du Tillet profited by this to throw the whole loss on your idiotic husband: 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 man of wit: she makes him a polite speech, and goes away without learning much more of the enterprise which, not long before had swallowed up three hundred thousand francs.
There are many huge variations of this petty trouble.
EXAMPLE. Adolphe is brave and susceptible: he is walking on the Champs Elysees, where there is a crowd of people; in this crowd are several ill-mannered young men who indulge in jokes of doubtful propriety: Caroline puts up with them and pretends not to hear them, in order to keep her husband out of a duel.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE. A child belonging to the genus Terrible, exclaims in the 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 much stronger than me."
Madame Foullepointe laughs, and Adolphe, who intended to pay court to her, is cruelly joked by her, after having had a first last quarrel with Caroline.
In every household, husbands and wives must one day hear the striking of a fatal hour. It is a knell, the death and end of jealousy, a great, noble and charming passion, the only true symptom of love, if it is not even its double. When a woman is no longer jealous of her husband, all is over, she loves him no more. So, conjugal love expires in the last quarrel that a woman gives herself the trouble to raise.
Axiom.—When a woman ceases to quarrel with her husband, the Minotaur has seated himself in a corner arm-chair, tapping his boots with his cane.
Every woman must remember her last quarrel, that supreme petty trouble which often explodes about nothing, but more often still on some occasion of a brutal fact or of a decisive proof. This cruel farewell to faith, to the childishness of love, to virtue even, is in a degree as capricious as life itself. Like life it varies in every house.
Here, the author ought perhaps to search out all the varieties of quarrels, if he desires to be precise.
Thus, Caroline may have discovered that the judicial robe of the syndic in Chaumontel's affair, hides a robe of infinitely softer stuff, 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 his greatcoat thrown wrong side out across a chair; the edge of a little perfumed paper, just peeping out of the side-pocket, may have attracted her by its whiteness, like a ray of the sun entering a dark room through a crack in the window: or else, while taking Adolphe in her arms and feeling his pocket, she may have caused the note to crackle: or else she may have been informed of the state of things by a foreign odor that she has long noticed upon him, and may have read these lines:
"Ungraitfull wun, wot du yu supoz I no About Hipolite. Kum, and yu shal se whether I Love yu."
Or this:
"Yesterday, love, you made me wait for you: what will it be to-morrow?"
Or this:
"The women who love you, my dear sir, are very unhappy in hating you so, when you are not with them: take care, for the hatred which exists during your absence, may possibly encroach upon the hours you spend in their company."
Or this:
"You traitorous Chodoreille, what were you doing yesterday on the boulevard with a woman hanging on your arm? If it was your wife, accept my compliments of condolence upon her absent charms: she has doubtless deposited them at the pawnbroker's, and the ticket to redeem them with is lost."
Four notes emanating from the grisette, the lady, the pretentious woman in middle life, and the actress, among whom Adolphe has chosen hisbelle(according to the Fischtaminellian vocabulary).
Or else Caroline, taken veiled by Ferdinand to Ranelagh Garden, sees with her own eyes Adolphe abandoning himself furiously to the polka, holding one of the ladies of honor to Queen Pomare in his arms; or else, again, Adolphe has for the seventh time, made a mistake in the name, and called his wife Juliette, Charlotte or Lisa: or, a grocer or restaurateur sends to the house, during Adolphe's absence, certain damning bills which fall into Caroline's hands.
(Private Tables Served.)
M. Adolphe to Perrault,
To 1 Pate de Foie Gras delivered at MadameSchontz's, the 6th of January, fr. 22.50Six bottle of assorted wines, 70.00To one special breakfast delivered at CongressHotel, the 11th of February, at No. 21——Stipulated price, 100.00______
Total, Francs, 192.50
Caroline examines the dates and remembers them as appointments made for business connected with Chaumontel's affair. Adolphe had designated the sixth of January as the day fixed for a meeting at which the creditors in Chaumontel's affair were to receive the sums due them. On the eleventh of February he had an appointment with the notary, in order to sign a receipt relative to Chaumontel's affair.
Or else—but an attempt to mention all the chances of discovery would be the undertaking of a madman.
Every woman will remember to herself how the bandage with which her eyes were bound fell off: how, after many doubts, and agonies of heart, she made up her mind to have a final quarrel for the simple purpose 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.