ing of the morning wagons. Those terrible, vexatious, quivering
teams, laden with meat, those trucks with big tin teats bursting with
milk, though they make a clatter most infernal and even crush the
paving stones, seem to you to glide over cotton, and vaguely remind
you of the orchestra of Napoleon Musard. Though your house trembles in
all its timbers and shakes upon its keel, you think yourself a sailor
cradled by a zephyr.

You alone have the right to bring these joys to an end by throwing
away your night-cap as you twist up your napkin after dinner, and by
sitting up in bed. Then you take yourself to task with such reproaches
as these: "Ah, mercy on me, I must get up!" "Early to bed and early to
rise, makes a man healthy--!" "Get up, lazy bones!"

All this time you remain perfectly tranquil. You look round your
chamber, you collect your wits together. Finally, you emerge from the
bed, spontaneously! Courageously! of your own accord! You go to the
fireplace, you consult the most obliging of timepieces, you utter
hopeful sentences thus couched: "Whatshisname is a lazy creature, I
guess I shall find him in. I'll run. I'll catch him if he's gone. He's
sure to wait for me. There is a quarter of an hour's grace in all
appointments, even between debtor and creditor."

You put on your boots with fury, you dress yourself as if you were
afraid of being caught half-dressed, you have the delight of being in
a hurry, you call your buttons into action, you finally go out like a
conqueror, whistling, brandishing your cane, pricking up your ears and
breaking into a canter.

After all, you say to yourself, you are responsible to no one, you are
your own master!

But you, poor married man, you were stupid enough to say to your wife,
"To-morrow, my dear" (sometimes she knows it two days beforehand), "I
have got to get up early." Unfortunate Adolphe, you have especially
proved the importance of this appointment: "It's to--and to--and above
all to--in short to--"

Two hours before dawn, Caroline wakes you up gently and says to you
softly: "Adolphy dear, Adolphy love!"

"What's the matter? Fire?"

"No, go to sleep again, I've made a mistake; but the hour hand was on
it, any way! It's only four, you can sleep two hours more."

Is not telling a man, "You've only got two hours to sleep," the same
thing, on a small scale, as saying to a criminal, "It's five in the
morning, the ceremony will be performed at half-past seven"? Such