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A very smart and soldierly appearance the quartermaster-sergeant presented on horseback in his position on the left hand of the forward driver, a good-looking light-haired man, Adolphe by name, whose mount was a sturdy chestnut, admirably matched with the mate that trotted at his side, while in his proper place among the six men who were seated on the chests of the gun and its caisson was the gunner, Louis, a small, dark man, Adolphe's comrade; they constituted a team, as it is called, in accordance with the rule of the service that couples a mounted and an unmounted man together.
Whatever Maman Bauche liked, that she would do; only she would not name a day herself. Indeed she would neither do nor say anything herself which tended in any way to a furtherance of these matrimonials. But then she acquiesced, quietly enough if not readily, in what other people did and said; and so the marriage was fixed for the day week after Adolphe's return.
Caroline, when she has once planted in Adolphe's heart the apprehension of a scene of constantly reiterated demands, feels her hatred for his control largely increase.
A quizzical idea enters Adolphe's head, and he replies, winking with one eye only: "I have just seen him." "Where?" "In front of the Cafe de Paris, with some friends." "But why have you come back?" says Caroline, trying to conceal her murderous fury. "Madame Foullepointe, who was tired of Charles, you said, has been with him at Ville d'Avray since yesterday."
Often the gracious "yes" of the sumptuous upper floor became a dry "no" in Adolphe's region. This obstructive manoeuvre gave time for reflection, and often served to fool unskilful applicants. As Cesar entered, the banker's brother was conversing with the famous Palma, intimate adviser of the house of Keller, who retired on the appearance of the perfumer.
Caroline is terrified by this remark which reveals Adolphe's profound rascality. "He supposed, sir, that you would have pity upon the mother of a family, upon her children " "Ta, ta, ta," returns the syndic. "You have come to influence my independence, my conscience, you want me to give the creditors up to you: well, I'll do more, I give you up my heart, my fortune!
On her part, it is a delicious joke, a new jest to enliven their married life, and one dictated by the purest intentions; while on Adolphe's part, it is a piece of cruelty worthy a Carib, a disregard of his wife's heart, and a deliberate plan to give her pain. But that is nothing. "So you are really in love with Madame de Fischtaminel?" Caroline asks.
"What brutality!" says Caroline, rising and going away with her handkerchief at her eyes. The country house, so ardently longed for by Caroline, has now become a diabolical invention of Adolphe's, a trap into which the fawn has fallen. Since Adolphe's discovery that it is impossible to reason with Caroline, he lets her say whatever she pleases.
Among other strokes of luck, I sold my rascal dog for $25 to an infatuated Englishman, and won six hundred glasses of absinthe at a single game of billiards from the proprietor of the Paris coach, commuting them for a dozen free passages. I said good-bye to the dear mother and the saintly abbé, and found myself early on a May morning at Adolphe's door.
Your voice is like a siren's, your hands command respect and love. Ah! that arm! place bracelets upon it, and how pleasingly it would rest upon the velvet of a robe! Your locks are chains which would fetter all men. And you could lay all your triumphs at Adolphe's feet, show him your power and never use it. Then he would fear, where now he lives in insolent certainty. Come! To action!
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