Caroline breathes again.  “It’s—­” she suggests.

“It’s incomprehensible,” resumes Adolphe.  “Somebody must have paid Chodoreille five or six hundred francs to insert it; or else it’s the production of a blue-stocking in high society who has promised to invite Madame Chodoreille to her house; or perhaps it’s the work of a woman in whom the editor is personally interested.  Such a piece of stupidity cannot be explained any other way.  Imagine, Caroline, that it’s all about a little flower picked on the edge of a wood in a sentimental walk, which a gentleman of the Werther school has sworn to keep, which he has had framed, and which the lady claims again eleven years after (the poor man has had time to change his lodgings three times).  It’s quite new, about as old as Sterne or Gessner.  What makes me think it’s a woman, is that the first literary idea of the whole sex is to take vengeance on some one.”

Adolphe might go on pulling “The Lotus” to pieces; Caroline’s ears are full of the tinkling of bells.  She is like the woman who threw herself over the Pont des Arts, and tried to find her way ten feet below the level of the Seine.

ANOTHER STYLE.  Caroline, in her paroxysms of jealousy, has discovered a hiding place used by Adolphe, who, as he can’t trust his wife, and as he knows she opens his letters and rummages in his drawers, has endeavored to save his correspondence with Hector from the hooked fingers of the conjugal police.

Hector is an old schoolmate, who has married in the Loire Inferieure.

Adolphe lifts up the cloth of his writing desk, a cloth the border of which has been embroidered by Caroline, the ground being blue, black or red velvet,—­the color, as you see, is perfectly immaterial,—­and he slips his unfinished letters to Madame de Fischtaminel, to his friend Hector, between the table and the cloth.

The thickness of a sheet of paper is almost nothing, velvet is a downy, discreet material, but, no matter, these precautions are in vain.  The male devil is fairly matched by the female devil:  Tophet will furnish them of all genders.  Caroline has Mephistopheles on her side, the demon who causes tables to spurt forth fire, and who, with his ironic finger points out the hiding place of keys—­the secret of secrets.

Caroline has noticed the thickness of a letter sheet between this velvet and this table:  she hits upon a letter to Hector instead of hitting upon one to Madame de Fischtaminel, who has gone to Plombieres Springs, and reads the following: 

“My dear Hector: 

“I pity you, but you have acted wisely in entrusting me with a knowledge of the difficulties in which you have voluntarily involved yourself.  You never would see the difference between the country woman and the woman of Paris.  In the country, my dear boy, you are always face to face with your wife, and, owing to the ennui which impels you, you rush headforemost into the enjoyment of your bliss.  This is a great error:  happiness is an abyss, and when you have once reached the bottom, you never get back again, in wedlock.