oung anecdote.

One of the grand dignitaries of the Chamber of Peers had a Caroline, as
lax as Carolines usually are. The name is an auspicious one for women.
This dignitary, extremely old at the time, was on one side of the
fireplace, and Caroline on the other. Caroline was hard upon the lustrum
when women no longer tell their age. A friend came in to inform them of
the marriage of a general who had lately been intimate in their house.

Caroline at once had a fit of despair, with genuine tears; she screamed
and made the grand dignitary's head ache to such a degree, that he
tried to console her. In the midst of his condolences, the count forgot
himself so far as to say--"What can you expect, my dear, he really could
not marry you!"

And this was one of the highest functionaries of the state, but a friend
of Louis XVIII, and necessarily a little bit Pompadour.

The whole difference, then, between the situation of Adolphe and that
of Caroline, consists in this: though he no longer cares about her, she
retains the right to care about him.

Now, let us listen to "What _they_ say," the theme of the concluding
chapter of this work.

COMMENTARY. IN WHICH IS EXPLAINED LA FELICITA OF FINALES.

Who has not heard an Italian opera in the course of his life? You must
then have noticed the musical abuse of the word _felicita_, so lavishly
used by the librettist and the chorus at the moment when everybody is
deserting his box or leaving the house.

Frightful image of life. We quit it just when we hear _la felicita_.

Have you reflected upon the profound truth conveyed by this finale, at
the instant when the composer delivers his last note and the author his
last line, when the orchestra gives the last pull at the fiddle-bow and
the last puff at the bassoon, when the principal singers say "Let's go
to supper!" and the chorus people exclaim "How lucky, it doesn't rain!"
Well, in every condition in life, as in an Italian opera, there comes
a time when the joke is over, when the trick is done, when people must
make up their minds to one thing or the other, when everybody is singing
his own _felicita_ for himself. After having gone through with all
the duos, the solos, the stretti, the codas, the concerted pieces, the
duettos, the nocturnes, the phases which these few scenes, chosen from
the ocean of married life, exhibit you, and which are themes whose
variations have doubtless been divined by persons with brains as well
a