Caroline looks loftily down upon her husband, and says, after a pause worthy of an actress, “I am neither a Strasburg goose nor a giraffe!”

“’Tis true, I might lay out four thousand francs a month to better effect,” returns Adolphe.

“What do you mean?”

“With the quarter of that sum, presented to estimable burglars, youthful jail-birds and honorable criminals, I might become somebody, a Man in the Blue Cloak on a small scale; and then a young woman is proud of her husband,” Adolphe replies.

This answer is the grave of love, and Caroline takes it in very bad part.  An explanation follows.  This must be classed among the thousand pleasantries of the following chapter, the title of which ought to make lovers smile as well as husbands.  If there are yellow rays of light, why should there not be whole days of this extremely matrimonial color?

FORCED SMILES.

On your arrival in this latitude, you enjoy numerous little scenes, which, in the grand opera of marriage, represent the intermezzos, and of which the following is a type: 

You are one evening alone after dinner, and you have been so often alone already that you feel a desire to say sharp little things to each other, like this, for instance: 

“Take care, Caroline,” says Adolphe, who has not forgotten his many vain efforts to please her.  “I think your nose has the impertinence to redden at home quite well as at the restaurant.”

“This is not one of your amiable days!”

General Rule.—­No man has ever yet discovered the way to give friendly advice to any woman, not even to his own wife.

“Perhaps it’s because you are laced too tight.  Women make themselves sick that way.”

The moment a man utters these words to a woman, no matter whom, that woman,—­who knows that stays will bend,—­seizes her corset by the lower end, and bends it out, saying, with Caroline: 

“Look, you can get your hand in!  I never lace tight.”

“Then it must be your stomach.”

“What has the stomach got to do with the nose?”

“The stomach is a centre which communicates with all the organs.”

“So the nose is an organ, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Your organ is doing you a poor service at this moment.”  She raises her eyes and shrugs her shoulders.  “Come, Adolphe, what have I done?”

“Nothing.  I’m only joking, and I am unfortunate enough not to please you,” returns Adolphe, smiling.

“My misfortune is being your wife!  Oh, why am I not somebody else’s!”

“That’s what I say!”

“If I were, and if I had the innocence to say to you, like a coquette who wishes to know how far she has got with a man, ’the redness of my nose really gives me anxiety,’ you would look at me in the glass with all the affectations of an ape, and would reply, ’O madame, you do yourself an injustice; in the first place, nobody sees it:  besides, it harmonizes with your complexion; then again we are all so after dinner!’ and from this you would go on to flatter me.  Do I ever tell you that you are growing fat, that you are getting the color of a stone-cutter, and that I prefer thin and pale men?”