e," says Adolphe, who has not forgotten his many
vain efforts to please her. "I think your nose has the impertinence to
redden at home quite well as at the restaurant."

"This is not one of your amiable days!"

General Rule.--No man has ever yet discovered the way to give friendly
advice to any woman, not even to his own wife.

"Perhaps it's because you are laced too tight. Women make themselves
sick that way."

The moment a man utters these words to a woman, no matter whom, that
woman,--who knows that stays will bend,--seizes her corset by the
lower end, and bends it out, saying, with Caroline:

"Look, you can get your hand in! I never lace tight."

"Then it must be your stomach."

"What has the stomach got to do with the nose?"

"The stomach is a centre which communicates with all the organs."

"So the nose is an organ, is it?"

"Yes."

"Your organ is doing you a poor service at this moment." She raises
her eyes and shrugs her shoulders. "Come, Adolphe, what have I done?"

"Nothing. I'm only joking, and I am unfortunate enough not to please
you," returns Adolphe, smiling.

"My misfortune is being your wife! Oh, why am I not somebody else's!"

"That's what _I_ say!"

"If I were, and if I had the innocence to say to you, like a coquette
who wishes to know how far she has got with a man, 'the redness of my
nose really gives me anxiety,' you would look at me in the glass with
all the affectations of an ape, and would reply, 'O madame, you do
yourself an injustice; in the first place, nobody sees it: besides, it
harmonizes with your complexion; then again we are all so after
dinner!' and from this you would go on to flatter me. Do I ever tell
you that you are growing fat, that you are getting the color of a
stone-cutter, and that I prefer thin and pale men?"

They say in London, "Don't touch the axe!" In France we ought to say,
"Don't touch a woman's nose."

"And all this about a little extra natural vermilion!" exclaims
Adolphe. "Complain about it to Providence, whose office it is to put a
little more color in one place than another, not to me, who loves you,
who desires you to be perfect, and who merely says to you, take care!"

"You love me too much, then, for you've been trying, for some time
past, to find disagreeable things to say to me. You want to run me
down under the pretext of making me perfect--people said I _was_
perfect, five years ago."

"I think you are better than perfect, you a