Caroline tells her friends things which she thinks exceedingly flattering, but which cause a sagacious husband to make a wry face.

“Adolphe has been delightful for some time past.  I don’t know what I have done to deserve so much attention, but he overpowers me.  He gives value to everything by those delicate ways which have such an effect upon us women.  After taking me Monday to the Rocher de Cancale to dine, he declared that Very was as good a cook as Borrel, and he gave me the little party of pleasure that I told you of all over again, presenting me at dessert with a ticket for the opera.  They sang ‘William Tell,’ which, you know, is my craze.”

“You are lucky indeed,” returns Madame Deschars with evident jealousy.

“Still, a wife who discharges all her duties, deserves such luck, it seems to me.”

When this terrible sentiment falls from the lips of a married woman, it is clear that she does her duty, after the manner of school-boys, for the reward she expects.  At school, a prize is the object:  in marriage, a shawl or a piece of jewelry.  No more love, then!

“As for me,”—­Madame Deschars is piqued—­“I am reasonable.  Deschars committed such follies once, but I put a stop to it.  You see, my dear, we have two children, and I confess that one or two hundred francs are quite a consideration for me, as the mother of a family.”

“Dear me, madame,” says Madame de Fischtaminel, “it’s better that our husbands should have cosy little times with us than with—­”

“Deschars!—­” suddenly puts in Madame Deschars, as she gets up and says good-bye.

The individual known as Deschars (a man nullified by his wife) does not hear the end of the sentence, by which he might have learned that a man may spend his money with other women.

Caroline, flattered in every one of her vanities, abandons herself to the pleasures of pride and high living, two delicious capital sins.  Adolphe is gaining ground again, but alas! (this reflection is worth a whole sermon in Lent) sin, like all pleasure, contains a spur.  Vice is like an Autocrat, and let a single harsh fold in a rose-leaf irritate it, it forgets a thousand charming bygone flatteries.  With Vice a man’s course must always be crescendo!—­and forever.

Axiom.—­Vice, Courtiers, Misfortune and Love, care only for the PRESENT.

At the end of a period of time difficult to determine, Caroline looks in the glass, at dessert, and notices two or three pimples blooming upon her cheeks, and upon the sides, lately so pure, of her nose.  She is out of humor at the theatre, and you do not know why, you, so proudly striking an attitude in your cravat, you, displaying your figure to the best advantage, as a complacent man should.

A few days after, the dressmaker arrives.  She tries on a gown, she exerts all her strength, but cannot make the hooks and eyes meet.  The waiting maid is called.  After a two horse-power pull, a regular thirteenth labor of Hercules, a hiatus of two inches manifests itself.  The inexorable dressmaker cannot conceal from Caroline the fact that her form is altered.  Caroline, the aerial Caroline, threatens to become like Madame Deschars.  In vulgar language, she is getting stout.  The maid leaves her in a state of consternation.