atter their passions: my wife is mine!"

Some days afterward, during which Adolphe has been unusually attentive
to his wife, he discourses to her as follows:

"Caroline, dear, suppose we have a bit of fun: you'll put on your new
gown--the one like Madame Deschars!--and we'll go to see a farce at
the Varieties."

This kind of proposition always puts a wife in the best possible
humor. So away you go! Adolphe has ordered a dainty little dinner for
two, at Borrel's _Rocher de Cancale_.

"As we are going to the Varieties, suppose we dine at the tavern,"
exclaims Adolphe, on the boulevard, with the air of a man suddenly
struck by a generous idea.

Caroline, delighted with this appearance of good fortune, enters a
little parlor where she finds the cloth laid and that neat little
service set, which Borrel places at the disposal of those who are rich
enough to pay for the quarters intended for the great ones of the
earth, who make themselves small for an hour.

Women eat little at a formal dinner: their concealed harness hampers
them, they are laced tightly, and they are in the presence of women
whose eyes and whose tongues are equally to be dreaded. They prefer
fancy eating to good eating, then: they will suck a lobster's claw,
swallow a quail or two, punish a woodcock's wing, beginning with a bit
of fresh fish, flavored by one of those sauces which are the glory of
French cooking. France is everywhere sovereign in matters of taste: in
painting, fashions, and the like. Gravy is the triumph of taste, in
cookery. So that grisettes, shopkeepers' wives and duchesses are
delighted with a tasty little dinner washed down with the choicest
wines, of which, however, they drink but little, the whole concluded
by fruit such as can only be had at Paris; and especially delighted
when they go to the theatre to digest the little dinner, and listen,
in a comfortable box, to the nonsense uttered upon the stage, and to
that whispered in their ears to explain it. But then the bill of the
restaurant is one hundred francs, the box costs thirty, the carriage,
dress, gloves, bouquet, as much more. This gallantry amounts to the
sum of one hundred and sixty francs, which is hard upon four thousand
francs a month, if you go often to the Comic, the Italian, or the
Grand, Opera. Four thousand francs a month is the interest of a
capital of two millions. But then the honor of being a husband is
fully worth the price!

Caroline tells her friends thi