She cunningly lets him have your things that she may be left in peace.  Her bad faith as a good mother seeks shelter behind her child, your son is her accomplice.  Both are leagued against you like Robert Macaire and Bertrand against the subscribers to their joint stock company.  The boy is an axe with which foraging excursions are performed in your domains.  He goes either boldly or slyly to maraud in your wardrobe:  he reappears caparisoned in the drawers you laid aside that morning, and brings to the light of day many articles condemned to solitary confinement.  He brings the elegant Madame Fischtaminel, a friend whose good graces you cultivate, your girdle for checking corpulency, bits of cosmetic for dyeing your moustache, old waistcoats discolored at the arm-holes, stockings slightly soiled at the heels and somewhat yellow at the toes.  It is quite impossible to remark that these stains are caused by the leather!

Your wife looks at your friend and laughs; you dare not be angry, so you laugh too, but what a laugh!  The unfortunate all know that laugh.

Your son, moreover, gives you a cold sweat, if your razors happen to be out of their place.  If you are angry, the little rebel laughs and shows his two rows of pearls:  if you scold him, he cries.  His mother rushes in!  And what a mother she is!  A mother who will detest you if you don’t give him the razor!  With women there is no middle ground; a man is either a monster or a model.

At certain times you perfectly understand Herod and his famous decrees relative to the Massacre of the Innocents, which have only been surpassed by those of the good Charles X!

Your wife has returned to her sofa, you walk up and down, and stop, and you boldly introduce the subject by this interjectional remark: 

“Caroline, we must send Charles to boarding school.”

“Charles cannot go to boarding school,” she returns in a mild tone.

“Charles is six years old, the age at which a boy’s education begins.”

“In the first place,” she replies, “it begins at seven.  The royal princes are handed over to their governor by their governess when they are seven.  That’s the law and the prophets.  I don’t see why you shouldn’t apply to the children of private people the rule laid down for the children of princes.  Is your son more forward than theirs?  The king of Rome—­”

“The king of Rome is not a case in point.”

“What!  Is not the king of Rome the son of the Emperor? [Here she changes the subject.] Well, I declare, you accuse the Empress, do you?  Why, Doctor Dubois himself was present, besides—­”

“I said nothing of the kind.”

“How you do interrupt, Adolphe.”

“I say that the king of Rome [here you begin to raise your voice], the king of Rome, who was hardly four years old when he left France, is no example for us.”

“That doesn’t prevent the fact of the Duke de Bordeaux’s having been placed in the hands of the Duke de Riviere, his tutor, at seven years.” [Logic.]