They say in London, “Don’t touch the axe!” In France we ought to say, “Don’t touch a woman’s nose.”

“And all this about a little extra natural vermilion!” exclaims Adolphe.  “Complain about it to Providence, whose office it is to put a little more color in one place than another, not to me, who loves you, who desires you to be perfect, and who merely says to you, take care!”

“You love me too much, then, for you’ve been trying, for some time past, to find disagreeable things to say to me.  You want to run me down under the pretext of making me perfect—­people said I was perfect, five years ago.”

“I think you are better than perfect, you are stunning!”

“With too much vermilion?”

Adolphe, who sees the atmosphere of the north pole upon his wife’s face, sits down upon a chair by her side.  Caroline, unable decently to go away, gives her gown a sort of flip on one side, as if to produce a separation.  This motion is performed by some women with a provoking impertinence:  but it has two significations; it is, as whist players would say, either a signal for trumps or a renounce.  At this time, Caroline renounces.

“What is the matter?” says Adolphe.

“Will you have a glass of sugar and water?” asks Caroline, busying herself about your health, and assuming the part of a servant.

“What for?”

“You are not amiable while digesting, you must be in pain.  Perhaps you would like a drop of brandy in your sugar and water?  The doctor spoke of it as an excellent remedy.”

“How anxious you are about my stomach!”

“It’s a centre, it communicates with the other organs, it will act upon your heart, and through that perhaps upon your tongue.”

Adolphe gets up and walks about without saying a word, but he reflects upon the acuteness which his wife is acquiring:  he sees her daily gaining in strength and in acrimony:  she is getting to display an art in vexation and a military capacity for disputation which reminds him of Charles XII and the Russians.  Caroline, during this time, is busy with an alarming piece of mimicry:  she looks as if she were going to faint.

“Are you sick?” asks Adolphe, attacked in his generosity, the place where women always have us.

“It makes me sick at my stomach, after dinner, to see a man going back and forth so, like the pendulum of a clock.  But it’s just like you:  you are always in a fuss about something.  You are a queer set:  all men are more or less cracked.”

Adolphe sits down by the fire opposite to his wife, and remains there pensive:  marriage appears to him like an immense dreary plain, with its crop of nettles and mullen stalks.

“What, are you pouting?” asks Caroline, after a quarter of an hour’s observation of her husband’s countenance.

“No, I am meditating,” replied Adolphe.