lutary principle so strongly insisted upon in the
_Physiology of Marriage_. I have resolved to lead my wife through
paths beaten in the snow, until the happy day when infidelity will be
difficult.

"In the situation in which you have placed yourself, and which
resembles that of Duprez, who, on his first appearance at Paris, went
to singing with all the voice his lungs would yield, instead of
imitating Nourrit, who gave the audience just enough to enchant them,
the following, I think, is your proper course to--"

The letter broke off here: Caroline returned it to its place, at the
same time wondering how she would make her dear Adolphe expiate his
obedience to the execrable precepts of the _Physiology of Marriage_.

A TRUCE.

This trouble doubtless occurs sufficiently often and in different ways
enough in the existence of married women, for this personal incident
to become the type of the genus.

The Caroline in question here is very pious, she loves her husband
very much, her husband asserts that she loves him too much, even: but
this is a piece of marital conceit, if, indeed, it is not a
provocation, as he only complains to his wife's young lady friends.

When a person's conscience is involved, the least thing becomes
exceedingly serious. Madame de ----- has told her young friend, Madame
de Fischtaminel, that she had been compelled to make an extraordinary
confession to her spiritual director, and to perform penance, the
director having decided that she was in a state of mortal sin. This
lady, who goes to mass every morning, is a woman of thirty-six years,
thin and slightly pimpled. She has large soft black eyes, her upper
lip is strongly shaded: still her voice is sweet, her manners gentle,
her gait noble--she is a woman of quality.

Madame de Fischtaminel, whom Madame de ----- has made her friend
(nearly all pious women patronize a woman who is considered worldly,
on the pretext of converting her),--Madame de Fischtaminel asserts
that these qualities, in this Caroline of the Pious Sort, are a
victory of religion over a rather violent natural temper.

These details are necessary to describe the trouble in all its horror.

This lady's Adolphe had been compelled to leave his wife for two
months, in April, immediately after the forty days' fast that Caroline
scrupulously observes. Early in June, therefore, madame expected her
husband, she expected him day by day. From one ho