is unnecessary to speak of her morning gown. A pious
lady who lives at Paris and who loves her husband, knows as well as a
coquette how to choose those pretty little striped patterns, have them
cut with an open waist, and fastened by loops to buttons in a way which
compels her to refasten them two or three times in an hour, with little
airs more or less charming, as the case may be.

The nine o'clock mass, the ten o'clock mass, every mass, went by in
these preparations, which, for women in love, are one of their twelve
labors of Hercules.

Pious women rarely go to church in a carriage, and they are right.
Except in the case of a pouring shower, or intolerably bad weather, a
person ought not to appear haughty in the place where it is becoming to
be humble. Caroline was afraid to compromise the freshness of her dress
and the purity of her thread stockings. Alas! these pretexts concealed a
reason.

"If I am at church when Adolphe comes, I shall lose the pleasure of his
first glance: and he will think I prefer high mass to him."

She made this sacrifice to her husband in a desire to please him--a
fearfully worldly consideration. Prefer the creature to the Creator! A
husband to heaven! Go and hear a sermon and you will learn what such an
offence will cost you.

"After all," says Caroline, quoting her confessor, "society is founded
upon marriage, which the Church has included among its sacraments."

And this is the way in which religious instruction may be put aside in
favor of a blind though legitimate love. Madame refused breakfast, and
ordered the meal to be kept hot, just as she kept herself ready, at a
moment's notice, to welcome the precious absentee.

Now these little things may easily excite a laugh: but in the first
place they are continually occurring with couples who love each
other, or where one of them loves the other: besides, in a woman
so strait-laced, so reserved, so worthy, as this lady, these
acknowledgments of affection went beyond the limits imposed upon her
feelings by the lofty self-respect which true piety induces. When Madame
de Fischtaminel narrated this little scene in a devotee's life, dressing
it up with choice by-play, acted out as ladies of the world know how to
act out their anecdotes, I took the liberty of saying that it was the
Canticle of canticles in action.

"If her husband doesn't come," said Justine to the cook, "what will
become of us? She has already thrown her chemise in my f