“Oh, what an infernal temper you’ve got!” she returns, with a shrug of the shoulders.  “Is it for what I said about your stomach, your shape and your digestion?  Don’t you see that I was only paying you back for your vermilion?  You’ll make me think that men are as vain as women. [Adolphe remains frigid.] It is really quite kind in you to take our qualities. [Profound silence.] I made a joke and you got angry [she looks at Adolphe], for you are angry.  I am not like you:  I cannot bear the idea of having given you pain!  Nevertheless, it’s an idea that a man never would have had, that of attributing your impertinence to something wrong in your digestion.  It’s not my Dolph, it’s his stomach that was bold enough to speak.  I did not know you were a ventriloquist, that’s all.”

Caroline looks at Adolphe and smiles:  Adolphe is as stiff as if he were glued.

“No, he won’t laugh!  And, in your jargon, you call this having character.  Oh, how much better we are!”

She goes and sits down in Adolphe’s lap, and Adolphe cannot help smiling.  This smile, extracted as if by a steam engine, Caroline has been on the watch for, in order to make a weapon of it.

“Come, old fellow, confess that you are wrong,” she says.  “Why pout?  Dear me, I like you just as you are:  in my eyes you are as slender as when I married you, and slenderer perhaps.”

“Caroline, when people get to deceive themselves in these little matters, where one makes concessions and the other does not get angry, do you know what it means?”

“What does it mean?” asks Caroline, alarmed at Adolphe’s dramatic attitude.

“That they love each other less.”

“Oh! you monster, I understand you:  you were angry so as to make me believe you loved me!”

Alas! let us confess it, Adolphe tells the truth in the only way he can—­by a laugh.

“Why give me pain?” she says.  “If I am wrong in anything, isn’t it better to tell me of it kindly, than brutally to say [here she raises her voice], ‘Your nose is getting red!’ No, that is not right!  To please you, I will use an expression of the fair Fischtaminel, ’It’s not the act of a gentleman!’”

Adolphe laughs and pays the expenses of the reconciliation; but instead of discovering therein what will please Caroline and what will attach her to him, he finds out what attaches him to her.

NOSOGRAPHY OF THE VILLA.

Is it advantageous for a man not to know what will please his wife after their marriage?  Some women (this still occurs in the country) are innocent enough to tell promptly what they want and what they like.  But in Paris, nearly every woman feels a kind of enjoyment in seeing a man wistfully obedient to her heart, her desires, her caprices—­three expressions for the same thing!—­and anxiously going round and round, half crazy and desperate, like a dog that has lost his master.

They call this being loved, poor things!  And a good many of them say to themselves, as did Caroline, “How will he manage?”