nation with you women. What will you do?"

"It doesn't concern you at all."

"Excuse me, madame, quite the contrary. Dignity, honor--"

"Oh, have no fear of that, sir. For your sake more than for my own, I
will keep it a dead secret."

"Come, Caroline, my own Carola, what do you mean to do?"

Caroline darts a viper-like glance at Adolphe, who recoils and proceeds
to walk up and down the room.

"There now, tell me, what will you do?" he repeats after much too
prolonged a silence.

"I shall go to work, sir!"

At this sublime declaration, Adolphe executes a movement in retreat,
detecting a bitter exasperation, and feeling the sharpness of a north
wind which had never before blown in the matrimonial chamber.

THE ART OF BEING A VICTIM.

On and after the Revolution, our vanquished Caroline adopts an infernal
system, the effect of which is to make you regret your victory every
hour. She becomes the opposition! Should Adolphe have one more such
triumph, he would appear before the Court of Assizes, accused of having
smothered his wife between two mattresses, like Shakespeare's Othello.
Caroline puts on the air of a martyr; her submission is positively
killing. On every occasion she assassinates Adolphe with a "Just as you
like!" uttered in tones whose sweetness is something fearful. No elegiac
poet could compete with Caroline, who utters elegy upon elegy: elegy in
action, elegy in speech: her smile is elegiac, her silence is elegiac,
her gestures are elegiac. Here are a few examples, wherein every
household will find some of its impressions recorded:

AFTER BREAKFAST. "Caroline, we go to-night to the Deschars' grand ball
you know."

"Yes, love."

AFTER DINNER. "What, not dressed yet, Caroline?" exclaims Adolphe, who
has just made his appearance, magnificently equipped.

He finds Caroline arrayed in a gown fit for an elderly lady of strong
conversational powers, a black moire with an old-fashioned fan-waist.
Flowers, too badly imitated to deserve the name of artificial, give a
gloomy aspect to a head of hair which the chambermaid has carelessly
arranged. Caroline's gloves have already seen wear and tear.

"I am ready, my dear."

"What, in that dress?"

"I have no other. A new dress would have cost three hundred francs."

"Why did you not tell me?"

"I, ask you for anything, after what has happened!"

"I'll go alone," says Adolphe, unwilling to be humiliated in his wife.

"I dare say you are ver