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.

She begins to think you are cross-grained, moody.  The fact is, you are watching her, that’s all!  In short, you keep her within a small circle of friends, for she has already embroiled you with people on whom your interests depended.

How many times have you recoiled from the necessity of a remonstrance, in the morning, on awakening, when you had put her in a good humor for listening!  A woman rarely listens.  How many times have you recoiled from the burthen of your imperious obligations!

The conclusion of your ministerial communication can be no other than:  “You have no sense.”  You foresee the effect of your first lesson.  Caroline will say to herself:  “Ah I have no sense!  Haven’t I though?”

No woman ever takes this in good part.  Both of you must draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.  Six weeks after, Caroline may prove to you that she has quite sense enough to minotaurize you without your perceiving it.

Frightened at such a prospect, you make use of all the eloquent phrases to gild this pill.  In short, you find the means of flattering Caroline’s various self-loves, for: 

Axiom.—­A married woman has several self-loves.

You say that you are her best friend, the only one well situated to enlighten her; the more careful you are, the more watchful and puzzled she is.  At this moment she has plenty of sense.

You ask your dear Caroline, whose waist you clasp, how she, who is so brilliant when alone with you, who retorts so charmingly (you remind her of sallies that she has never made, which you put in her mouth, and, which she smilingly accepts), how she can say this, that, and the other, in society.  She is, doubtless, like many ladies, timid in company.

“I know,” you say, “many very distinguished men who are just the same.”

You cite the case of some who are admirable tea-party oracles, but who cannot utter half a dozen sentences in the tribune.  Caroline should keep watch over herself; you vaunt silence as the surest method of being witty.  In society, a good listener is highly prized.

You have broken the ice, though you have not even scratched its glossy surface:  you have placed your hand upon the croup of the most ferocious and savage, the most wakeful and clear-sighted, the most restless, the swiftest, the most jealous, the most ardent and violent, the simplest and most elegant, the most unreasonable, the most watchful chimera of the moral world—­THE VANITY OF A WOMAN!