“We are happy, my dear [to a lady], when we love each other no longer:  it’s then that we learn how to make ourselves beloved,” and she looks at Ferdinand.

In short, the last quarrel never comes to an end, and from this fact flows the following axiom: 

Axiom.—­Putting yourself in the wrong with your lawful wife, is solving the problem of Perpetual Motion.

A SIGNAL FAILURE.

Women, and especially married women, stick ideas into their brain-pan precisely as they stick pins into a pincushion, and the devil himself, —­do you mind?—­could not get them out:  they reserve to themselves the exclusive right of sticking them in, pulling them out, and sticking them in again.

Caroline is riding home one evening from Madame Foullepointe’s in a violent state of jealousy and ambition.

Madame Foullepointe, the lioness—­but this word requires an explanation.  It is a fashionable neologism, and gives expression to certain rather meagre ideas relative to our present society:  you must use it, if you want to describe a woman who is all the rage.  This lioness rides on horseback every day, and Caroline has taken it into her head to learn to ride also.

Observe that in this conjugal phase, Adolphe and Caroline are in the season which we have denominated A Household Revolution, and that they have had two or three Last Quarrels.

“Adolphe,” she says, “do you want to do me a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Won’t you refuse?”

“If your request is reasonable, I am willing—­”

“Ah, already—­that’s a true husband’s word—­if—­”

“Come, what is it?”

“I want to learn to ride on horseback.”

“Now, is it a possible thing, Caroline?”

Caroline looks out of the window, and tries to wipe away a dry tear.

“Listen,” resumes Adolphe; “I cannot let you go alone to the riding-school; and I cannot go with you while business gives me the annoyance it does now.  What’s the matter?  I think I have given you unanswerable reasons.”

Adolphe foresees the hiring of a stable, the purchase of a pony, the introduction of a groom and of a servant’s horse into the establishment—­in short, all the nuisance of female lionization.

When a man gives a woman reasons instead of giving her what she wants —­well, few men have ventured to descend into that small abyss called the heart, to test the power of the tempest that suddenly bursts forth there.

“Reasons!  If you want reasons, here they are!” exclaims Caroline.  “I am your wife:  you don’t seem to care to please me any more.  And as to the expenses, you greatly overrate them, my dear.”

Women have as many inflections of voice to pronounce these words, My dear, as the Italians have to say Amico.  I have counted twenty-nine which express only various degrees of hatred.

“Well, you’ll see,” resumes Caroline, “I shall be sick, and you will pay the apothecary and the doctor as much as the price of a horse.  I shall be walled up here at home, and that’s all you want.  I asked the favor of you, though I was sure of a refusal:  I only wanted to know how you would go to work to give it.”