ine, half ashamed, to herself, "I will
never let Adolphe go traveling again without me."

A Marseilles poet--it is not known whether it was Mery or Barthelemy
--acknowledged that if his best fried did not arrive punctually at the
dinner hour, he waited patiently five minutes: at the tenth minute, he
felt a desire to throw the napkin in his face: at the twelfth he hoped
some great calamity would befall him: at the fifteenth, he would not
be able to restrain himself from stabbing him several times with a
dirk.

All women, when expecting somebody, are Marseilles poets, if, indeed,
we may compare the vulgar throes of hunger to the sublime Canticle of
canticles of a pious wife, who is hoping for the joys of a husband's
first glance after a three months' absence. Let all those who love and
who have met again after an absence ten thousand times accursed, be
good enough to recall their first glance: it says so many things that
the lovers, if in the presence of a third party, are fain to lower
their eyes! This poem, in which every man is as great as Homer, in
which he seems a god to the woman who loves him, is, for a pious, thin
and pimpled lady, all the more immense, from the fact that she has
not, like Madame de Fischtaminel, the resource of having several
copies of it. In her case, her husband is all she's got!

So you will not be surprised to learn that Caroline missed every mass
and had no breakfast. This hunger and thirst for Adolphe gave her a
violent cramp in the stomach. She did not think of religion once
during the hours of mass, nor during those of vespers. She was not
comfortable when she sat, and she was very uncomfortable when she
stood: Justine advised her to go to bed. Caroline, quite overcome,
retired at about half past five in the evening, after having taken a
light soup: but she ordered a dainty supper at ten.

"I shall doubtless sup with my husband," she said.

This speech was the conclusion of dreadful catalinics, internally
fulminated. She had reached the Marseilles poet's several stabs with a
dirk. So she spoke in a tone that was really terrible. At three in the
morning Caroline was in a profound sleep: Adolphe arrived without her
hearing either carriage, or horse, or bell, or opening door!

Adolphe, who would not permit her to be disturbed, went to bed in the
spare room. When Caroline heard of his return in the morning, two
tears issued from her eyes; she rushed to the spare room without the
slight