re stunning!"

"With too much vermilion?"

Adolphe, who sees the atmosphere of the north pole upon his wife's
face, sits down upon a chair by her side. Caroline, unable decently to
go away, gives her gown a sort of flip on one side, as if to produce a
separation. This motion is performed by some women with a provoking
impertinence: but it has two significations; it is, as whist players
would say, either a signal _for trumps_ or a _renounce_. At this time,
Caroline renounces.

"What is the matter?" says Adolphe.

"Will you have a glass of sugar and water?" asks Caroline, busying
herself about your health, and assuming the part of a servant.

"What for?"

"You are not amiable while digesting, you must be in pain. Perhaps you
would like a drop of brandy in your sugar and water? The doctor spoke
of it as an excellent remedy."

"How anxious you are about my stomach!"

"It's a centre, it communicates with the other organs, it will act
upon your heart, and through that perhaps upon your tongue."

Adolphe gets up and walks about without saying a word, but he reflects
upon the acuteness which his wife is acquiring: he sees her daily
gaining in strength and in acrimony: she is getting to display an art
in vexation and a military capacity for disputation which reminds him
of Charles XII and the Russians. Caroline, during this time, is busy
with an alarming piece of mimicry: she looks as if she were going to
faint.

"Are you sick?" asks Adolphe, attacked in his generosity, the place
where women always have us.

"It makes me sick at my stomach, after dinner, to see a man going back
and forth so, like the pendulum of a clock. But it's just like you:
you are always in a fuss about something. You are a queer set: all men
are more or less cracked."

Adolphe sits down by the fire opposite to his wife, and remains there
pensive: marriage appears to him like an immense dreary plain, with
its crop of nettles and mullen stalks.

"What, are you pouting?" asks Caroline, after a quarter of an hour's
observation of her husband's countenance.

"No, I am meditating," replied Adolphe.

"Oh, what an infernal temper you've got!" she returns, with a shrug of
the shoulders. "Is it for what I said about your stomach, your shape
and your digestion? Don't you see that I was only paying you back for
your vermilion? You'll make me think that men are as vain as women.
[Adolphe remains frigid.] It is really quite kind in you to take our
q