Your wife, the young lady in whom the first pleasures of life and love supplied the place of grace and wit, so arch, so animated, so vivacious, whose least movements spoke with delicious eloquence, has cast off, slowly, one by one, her natural artifices.  At last you perceive the truth!  You try to disbelieve it, you think yourself deceived; but no:  Caroline lacks intellect, she is dull, she can neither joke nor reason, sometimes she has little tact.  You are frightened.  You find yourself forever obliged to lead this darling through the thorny paths, where you must perforce leave your self-esteem in tatters.

You have already been annoyed several times by replies that, in society, were politely received:  people have held their tongues instead of smiling; but you were certain that after your departure the women looked at each other and said:  “Did you hear Madame Adolphe?”

“Your little woman, she is—­”

“A regular cabbage-head.”

“How could he, who is certainly a man of sense, choose—?”

“He should educate, teach his wife, or make her hold her tongue.”

Axioms.

Axiom.—­In our system of civilization a man is entirely responsible for his wife.

Axiom.—­The husband does not mould the wife.

Caroline has one day obstinately maintained, at the house of Madame de Fischtaminel, a very distinguished lady, that her little last one resembled neither its father nor its mother, but looked like a certain friend of the family.  She perhaps enlightens Monsieur de Fischtaminel, and overthrows the labors of three years, by tearing down the scaffolding of Madame de Fischtaminel’s assertions, who, after this visit, will treat you will coolness, suspecting, as she does, that you have been making indiscreet remarks to your wife.

On another occasion, Caroline, after having conversed with a writer about his works, counsels the poet, who is already a prolific author, to try to write something likely to live.  Sometimes she complains of the slow attendance at the tables of people who have but one servant and have put themselves to great trouble to receive her.  Sometimes she speaks ill of widows who marry again, before Madame Deschars who has married a third time, and on this occasion, an ex-notary, Nicolas-Jean-Jerome-Nepomucene-Ange-Marie-Victor-Joseph Deschars, a friend of your father’s.

In short, you are no longer yourself when you are in society with your wife.  Like a man who is riding a skittish horse and glares straight between the beast’s two ears, you are absorbed by the attention with which you listen to your Caroline.

In order to compensate herself for the silence to which young ladies are condemned, Caroline talks; or rather babbles.  She wants to make a sensation, and she does make a sensation; nothing stops her.  She addresses the most eminent men, the most celebrated women.  She introduces herself, and puts you on the rack.  Going into society is going to the stake.