r my advice, take Madame de Fischtaminel for a model: she is a lady
of taste.' I, unsuspecting creature that I was, saw no perfidy in the
recommendation.

"One evening as we returned from a party, he said, 'Did you notice how
Madame de Fischtaminel was dressed!' 'Yes, very neatly.' And I said to
myself, 'He's always talking about Madame de Fischtaminel; I must
really dress just like her.' I had noticed the stuff and the make of
the dress, and the style of the trimmings. I was as happy as could be,
as I went trotting about town, doing everything I could to obtain the
same articles. I sent for the very same dressmaker.

"'You work for Madame de Fischtaminel,' I said.

"'Yes, madame.'

"'Well, I will employ you as my dressmaker, but on one condition: you
see I have procured the stuff of which her gown is made, and I want
you to make me one exactly like it.'

"I confess that I did not at first pay any attention to a rather
shrewd smile of the dressmaker, though I saw it and afterwards
accounted for it. 'So like it,' I added, 'that you can't tell them
apart.'

"Oh," says Caroline, interrupting herself and looking at me, "you men
teach us to live like spiders in the depths of their webs, to see
everything without seeming to look at it, to investigate the meaning
and spirit of words, movements, looks. You say, 'How cunning women
are!' But you should say, 'How deceitful men are!'

"I can't tell you how much care, how many days, how many manoeuvres,
it cost me to become Madame de Fischtaminel's duplicate! But these are
our battles, child," she adds, returning to Josephine. "I could not
find a certain little embroidered neckerchief, a very marvel! I
finally learned that it was made to order. I unearthed the
embroideress, and ordered a kerchief like Madame de Fischtaminel's.
The price was a mere trifle, one hundred and fifty francs! It had been
ordered by a gentleman who had made a present of it to Madame de
Fischtaminel. All my savings were absorbed by it. Now we women of
Paris are all of us very much restricted in the article of dress.
There is not a man worth a hundred thousand francs a year, that loses
ten thousand a winter at whist, who does not consider his wife
extravagant, and is not alarmed at her bills for what he calls 'rags'!
'Let my savings go,' I said. And they went. I had the modest pride of
a woman in love: I would not speak a word to Adolphe of my dress; I
wanted it to be a surprise, goose that I was! Oh,