“But, Caroline—­”

“Leave me alone at the riding-school!” she continues without listening.  “Is that a reason?  Can’t I go with Madame de Fischtaminel?  Madame de Fischtaminel is learning to ride on horseback, and I don’t imagine that Monsieur de Fischtaminel goes with her.”

“But, Caroline—­”

“I am delighted with your solicitude.  You think a great deal of me, really.  Monsieur de Fischtaminel has more confidence in his wife, than you have in yours.  He does not go with her, not he!  Perhaps it’s on account of this confidence that you don’t want me at the school, where I might see your goings on with the fair Fischtaminel.”

Adolphe tries to hide his vexation at this torrent of words, which begins when they are still half way from home, and has no sea to empty into.  When Caroline is in her room, she goes on in the same way.

“You see that if reasons could restore my health or prevent me from desiring a kind of exercise pointed out by nature herself, I should not be in want of reasons, and that I know all the reasons that there are, and that I went over with the reasons before I spoke to you.”

This, ladies, may with the more truth be called the prologue to the conjugal drama, from the fact that it is vigorously delivered, embellished with a commentary of gestures, ornamented with glances and all the other vignettes with which you usually illustrate such masterpieces.

Caroline, when she has once planted in Adolphe’s heart the apprehension of a scene of constantly reiterated demands, feels her hatred for his control largely increase.  Madame pouts, and she pouts so fiercely, that Adolphe is forced to notice it, on pain of very disagreeable consequences, for all is over, be sure of that, between two beings married by the mayor, or even at Gretna Green, when one of them no longer notices the sulkings of the other.

Axiom.—­A sulk that has struck in is a deadly poison.

It was to prevent this suicide of love that our ingenious France invented boudoirs.  Women could not well have Virgil’s willows in the economy of our modern dwellings.  On the downfall of oratories, these little cubbies become boudoirs.

This conjugal drama has three acts.  The act of the prologue is already played.  Then comes the act of false coquetry:  one of those in which French women have the most success.

Adolphe is walking about the room, divesting himself of his apparel, and the man thus engaged, divests himself of his strength as well as of his clothing.  To every man of forty, this axiom will appear profoundly just: 

Axiom.—­The ideas of a man who has taken his boots and his suspenders off, are no longer those of a man who is still sporting these two tyrants of the mind.

Take notice that this is only an axiom in wedded life.  In morals, it is what we call a relative theorem.

Caroline watches, like a jockey on the race course, the moment when she can distance her adversary.  She makes her preparations to be irresistibly fascinating to Adolphe.