t home one evening after dinner, and
sees his wife passionately kissing her little Marie.

"Poor child! I regret the future only for your sake! What is life, I
should like to know?"

"Come, my dear," says Adolphe, "don't take on so."

"I'm not taking on. Death doesn't frighten me--I saw a funeral this
morning, and I thought how happy the body was! How comes it that I
think of nothing but death? Is it a disease? I have an idea that I
shall die by my own hand."

The more Adolphe tries to divert Caroline, the more closely she wraps
herself up in the crape of her hopeless melancholy. This second time,
Adolphe stays at home and is wearied to death. At the third attack of
forced tears, he goes out without the slightest compunction. He
finally gets accustomed to these everlasting murmurs, to these dying
postures, these crocodile tears. So he says:

"If you are sick, Caroline, you'd better have a doctor."

"Just as you like! It will end quicker, so. But bring a famous one, if
you bring any."

At the end of a month, Adolphe, worn out by hearing the funereal air
that Caroline plays him on every possible key, brings home a famous
doctor. At Paris, doctors are all men of discernment, and are
admirably versed in conjugal nosography.

"Well, madame," says the great physician, "how happens it that so
pretty a woman allows herself to be sick?"

"Ah! sir, like the nose of old father Aubry, I aspire to the tomb--"

Caroline, out of consideration for Adolphe, makes a feeble effort to
smile.

"Tut, tut! But your eyes are clear: they don't seem to need our
infernal drugs."

"Look again, doctor, I am eaten up with fever, a slow, imperceptible
fever--"

And she fastens her most roguish glance upon the illustrious doctor,
who says to himself, "What eyes!"

"Now, let me see your tongue."

Caroline puts out her taper tongue between two rows of teeth as white
as those of a dog.

"It is a little bit furred at the root: but you have breakfasted--"
observes the great physician, turning toward Adolphe.

"Oh, a mere nothing," returns Caroline; "two cups of tea--"

Adolphe and the illustrious leech look at each other, for the doctor
wonders whether it is the husband or the wife that is trifling with
him.

"What do you feel?" gravely inquires the physician.

"I don't sleep."

"Good!"

"I have no appetite."

"Well!"

"I have a pain, here."

The doctor examines the part indicated.

"Very good, we'll look at that by an