O you, who often exclaim, “I don’t know what is the matter with my wife!” you will kiss this page of transcendent philosophy, for you will find in it the key to every woman’s character!  But as to knowing women as well as I know them, it will not be knowing them much; they don’t know themselves!  In fact, as you well know, God was Himself mistaken in the only one that He attempted to manage and to whose manufacture He had given personal attention.

Caroline is very willing to sting Adolphe at all hours, but this privilege of letting a wasp off now and then upon one’s consort (the legal term), is exclusively reserved to the wife.  Adolphe is a monster if he starts off a single fly at Caroline.  On her part, it is a delicious joke, a new jest to enliven their married life, and one dictated by the purest intentions; while on Adolphe’s part, it is a piece of cruelty worthy a Carib, a disregard of his wife’s heart, and a deliberate plan to give her pain.  But that is nothing.

“So you are really in love with Madame de Fischtaminel?” Caroline asks.  “What is there so seductive in the mind or the manners of the spider?”

“Why, Caroline—­”

“Oh, don’t undertake to deny your eccentric taste,” she returns, checking a negation on Adolphe’s lips.  “I have long seen that you prefer that Maypole [Madame de Fischtaminel is thin] to me.  Very well! go on; you will soon see the difference.”

Do you understand?  You cannot suspect Caroline of the slightest inclination for Monsieur Deschars, a low, fat, red-faced man, formerly a notary, while you are in love with Madame de Fischtaminel!  Then Caroline, the Caroline whose simplicity caused you such agony, Caroline who has become familiar with society, Caroline becomes acute and witty:  you have two gadflies instead of one.

The next day she asks you, with a charming air of interest, “How are you coming on with Madame de Fischtaminel?”

When you go out, she says:  “Go and drink something calming, my dear.”  For, in their anger with a rival, all women, duchesses even, will use invectives, and even venture into the domain of Billingsgate; they make an offensive weapon of anything and everything.

To try to convince Caroline that she is mistaken and that you are indifferent to Madame de Fischtaminel, would cost you dear.  This is a blunder that no sensible man commits; he would lose his power and spike his own guns.

Oh!  Adolphe, you have arrived unfortunately at that season so ingeniously called the Indian Summer of Marriage.

You must now—­pleasing task!—­win your wife, your Caroline, over again, seize her by the waist again, and become the best of husbands by trying to guess at things to please her, so as to act according to her whims instead of according to your will.  This is the whole question henceforth.

HARD LABOR.

Let us admit this, which, in our opinion, is a truism made as good as new: