The syndic is a lively young man, and he receives Madame Adolphe with a smile.  He smiles at everything, and he smiles as he takes her round the waist with an agility which leaves Caroline no time to resist, especially as she says to herself, “Adolphe particularly recommended me not to vex the syndic.”

Nevertheless Caroline escapes, in the interest of the syndic himself, and again pronounces the “Sir!” which she had said three times to the judge.

“Don’t be angry with me, you are irresistible, you are an angel, and your husband is a monster:  for what does he mean by sending a siren to a young man whom he knows to be inflammable!”

“Sir, my husband could not come himself; he is in bed, very sick, and you threatened him so terribly that the urgency of the matter—­”

“Hasn’t he got a lawyer, an attorney?”

Caroline is terrified by this remark which reveals Adolphe’s profound rascality.

“He supposed, sir, that you would have pity upon the mother of a family, upon her children—­”

“Ta, ta, ta,” returns the syndic.  “You have come to influence my independence, my conscience, you want me to give the creditors up to you:  well, I’ll do more, I give you up my heart, my fortune!  Your husband wants to save his honor, my honor is at your disposal!”

“Sir,” cries Caroline, as she tries to raise the syndic who has thrown himself at her feet.  “You alarm me!”

She plays the terrified female and thus reaches the door, getting out of a delicate situation as women know how to do it, that is, without compromising anything or anybody.

“I will come again,” she says smiling, “when you behave better.”

“You leave me thus!  Take care!  Your husband may yet find himself seated at the bar of the Court of Assizes:  he is accessory to a fraudulent bankruptcy, and we know several things about him that are not by any means honorable.  It is not his first departure from rectitude; he has done a good many dirty things, he has been mixed up in disgraceful intrigues, and you are singularly careful of the honor of a man who cares as little for his own honor as he does for yours.”

Caroline, alarmed by these words, lets go the door, shuts it and comes back.

“What do you mean, sir?” she exclaims, furious at this outrageous broadside.

“Why, this affair—­”

“Chaumontel’s affair?”

“No, his speculations in houses that he had built by people that were insolvent.”

Caroline remembers the enterprise undertaken by Adolphe to double his income:  (See The Jesuitism of Women) she trembles.  Her curiosity is in the syndic’s favor.

“Sit down here.  There, at this distance, I will behave well, but I can look at you.”