Women possess a power of mimicking pudicity, a knowledge of secrets which might be those of a frightened dove, a particular register for singing, like Isabella, in the fourth act of Robert le Diable:  “Grace pour toi!  Grace pour moi!" which leave jockeys and horse trainers whole miles behind.  As usual, the Diable succumbs.  It is the eternal history, the grand Christian mystery of the bruised serpent, of the delivered woman becoming the great social force, as the Fourierists say.  It is especially in this that the difference between the Oriental slave and the Occidental wife appears.

Upon the conjugal pillow, the second act ends by a number of onomatopes, all of them favorable to peace.  Adolphe, precisely like children in the presence of a slice of bread and molasses, promises everything that Caroline wants.

THIRD ACT.  As the curtain rises, the stage represents a chamber in a state of extreme disorder.  Adolphe, in his dressing gown, tries to go out furtively and without waking Caroline, who is sleeping profoundly, and finally does go out.

Caroline, exceedingly happy, gets up, consults her mirror, and makes inquiries about breakfast.  An hour afterward, when she is ready she learns that breakfast is served.

“Tell monsieur.”

“Madame, he is in the little parlor.”

“What a nice man he is,” she says, going up to Adolphe, and talking the babyish, caressing language of the honey-moon.

“What for, pray?”

“Why, to let his little Liline ride the horsey.”

OBSERVATION.  During the honey-moon, some few married couples,—­very young ones,—­make use of languages, which, in ancient days, Aristotle classified and defined. (See his Pedagogy.) Thus they are perpetually using such terminations as lala, nana, coachy-poachy, just as mothers and nurses use them to babies.  This is one of the secret reasons, discussed and recognized in big quartos by the Germans, which determined the Cabires, the creators of the Greek mythology, to represent Love as a child.  There are other reasons very well known to women, the principal of which is, that, in their opinion, love in men is always small.

“Where did you get that idea, my sweet?  You must have dreamed it!”

“What!”

Caroline stands stark still:  she opens wide her eyes which are already considerably widened by amazement.  Being inwardly epileptic, she says not a word:  she merely gazes at Adolphe.  Under the satanic fires of their gaze, Adolphe turns half way round toward the dining-room; but he asks himself whether it would not be well to let Caroline take one lesson, and to tip the wink to the riding-master, to disgust her with equestrianism by the harshness of his style of instruction.

There is nothing so terrible as an actress who reckons upon a success, and who fait four.

In the language of the stage, to faire four is to play to a wretchedly thin house, or to obtain not the slightest applause.  It is taking great pains for nothing, in short a signal failure.