I have long seen that you
prefer that Maypole [Madame de Fischtaminel is thin] to me. Very well!
go on; you will soon see the difference."

Do you understand? You cannot suspect Caroline of the slightest
inclination for Monsieur Deschars, a low, fat, red-faced man, formerly
a notary, while you are in love with Madame de Fischtaminel! Then
Caroline, the Caroline whose simplicity caused you such agony,
Caroline who has become familiar with society, Caroline becomes acute
and witty: you have two gadflies instead of one.

The next day she asks you, with a charming air of interest, "How are
you coming on with Madame de Fischtaminel?"

When you go out, she says: "Go and drink something calming, my dear."
For, in their anger with a rival, all women, duchesses even, will use
invectives, and even venture into the domain of Billingsgate; they
make an offensive weapon of anything and everything.

To try to convince Caroline that she is mistaken and that you are
indifferent to Madame de Fischtaminel, would cost you dear. This is a
blunder that no sensible man commits; he would lose his power and
spike his own guns.

Oh! Adolphe, you have arrived unfortunately at that season so
ingeniously called the _Indian Summer of Marriage_.

You must now--pleasing task!--win your wife, your Caroline, over
again, seize her by the waist again, and become the best of husbands
by trying to guess at things to please her, so as to act according to
her whims instead of according to your will. This is the whole
question henceforth.

HARD LABOR.

Let us admit this, which, in our opinion, is a truism made as good as
new:

Axiom.--Most men have some of the wit required by a difficult
position, when they have not the whole of it.

As for those husbands who are not up to their situation, it is
impossible to consider their case here: without any struggle whatever
they simply enter the numerous class of the _Resigned_.

Adolphe says to himself: "Women are children: offer them a lump of
sugar, and you will easily get them to dance all the dances that
greedy children dance; but you must always have a sugar plum in hand,
hold it up pretty high, and--take care that their fancy for sweetmeats
does not leave them. Parisian women--and Caroline is one--are very
vain, and as for their voracity--don't speak of it. Now you cannot
govern men and make friends of them, unless you work upon them through
their vices, and fl