she merely gazes at Adolphe. Under the satanic fires of
their gaze, Adolphe turns half way round toward the dining-room; but
he asks himself whether it would not be well to let Caroline take one
lesson, and to tip the wink to the riding-master, to disgust her with
equestrianism by the harshness of his style of instruction.

There is nothing so terrible as an actress who reckons upon a success,
and who _fait four_.

In the language of the stage, to _faire four_ is to play to a
wretchedly thin house, or to obtain not the slightest applause. It is
taking great pains for nothing, in short a _signal failure_.

This petty trouble--it is very petty--is reproduced in a thousand ways
in married life, when the honey-moon is over, and when the wife has no
personal fortune.

In spite of the author's repugnance to inserting anecdotes in an
exclusively aphoristic work, the tissue of which will bear nothing but
the most delicate and subtle observations,--from the nature of the
subject at least,--it seems to him necessary to illustrate this page
by an incident narrated by one of our first physicians. This
repetition of the subject involves a rule of conduct very much in use
with the doctors of Paris.

A certain husband was in our Adolphe's situation. His Caroline, having
once made a signal failure, was determined to conquer, for Caroline
often does conquer! (See _The Physiology of Marriage_, Meditation
XXVI, Paragraph _Nerves_.) She had been lying about on the sofas for
two months, getting up at noon, taking no part in the amusements of
the city. She would not go to the theatre,--oh, the disgusting
atmosphere!--the lights, above all, the lights! Then the bustle,
coming out, going in, the music,--it might be fatal, it's so terribly
exciting!

She would not go on excursions to the country, oh, certainly it was
her desire to do so!--but she would like (desiderata) a carriage of
her own, horses of her own--her husband would not give her an
equipage. And as to going in hacks, in hired conveyances, the bare
thought gave her a rising at the stomach!

She would not have any cooking--the smell of the meats produced a
sudden nausea. She drank innumerable drugs that her maid never saw her
take.

In short, she expended large amounts of time and money in attitudes,
privations, effects, pearl-white to give her the pallor of a corpse,
machinery, and the like, precisely as when the manager of a theatre
spreads rumors about a piece gotten up