You rush out in a rage, you are beside yourself, and are glad to meet a friend, that you may work off your bile.

“Don’t you ever marry, George; it’s better to see your heirs carrying away your furniture while the death-rattle is in your throat, better to go through an agony of two hours without a drop to cool your tongue, better to be assassinated by inquiries about your will by a nurse like the one in Henry Monnier’s terrible picture of a ‘Bachelor’s Last Moments!’ Never marry under any pretext!”

Fortunately you see the sublime young woman no more.  You are saved from the tortures to which a criminal passion was leading you.  You fall back again into the purgatory of your married bliss; but you begin to be attentive to Madame de Fischtaminel, with whom you were dreadfully in love, without being able to get near her, while you were a bachelor.

OBSERVATIONS.

When you have arrived at this point in the latitude or longitude of the matrimonial ocean, there appears a slight chronic, intermittent affection, not unlike the toothache.  Here, I see, you stop me to ask, “How are we to find the longitude in this sea?  When can a husband be sure he has attained this nautical point?  And can the danger be avoided?”

You may arrive at this point, look you, as easily after ten months as ten years of wedlock; it depends upon the speed of the vessel, its style of rigging, upon the trade winds, the force of the currents, and especially upon the composition of the crew.  You have this advantage over the mariner, that he has but one method of calculating his position, while husbands have at least a thousand of reckoning theirs.

EXAMPLE:  Caroline, your late darling, your late treasure, who is now merely your humdrum wife, leans much too heavily upon your arm while walking on the boulevard, or else says it is much more elegant not to take your arm at all;

Or else she notices men, older or younger as the case may be, dressed with more or less taste, whereas she formerly saw no one whatever, though the sidewalk was black with hats and traveled by more boots than slippers;

Or, when you come home, she says, “It’s no one but my husband:”  instead of saying “Ah! ’tis Adolphe!” as she used to say with a gesture, a look, an accent which caused her admirers to think, “Well, here’s a happy woman at last!” This last exclamation of a woman is suitable for two eras,—­first, while she is sincere; second, while she is hypocritical, with her “Ah! ’tis Adolphe!” When she exclaims, “It’s only my husband,” she no longer deigns to play a part.

Or, if you come home somewhat late—­at eleven, or at midnight—­you find her—­snoring!  Odious symptom!

Or else she puts on her stockings in your presence.  Among English couples, this never happens but once in a lady’s married life; the next day she leaves for the Continent with some captain or other, and no longer thinks of putting on her stockings at all.