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Updated: June 22, 2025
"Monsieur Deschars does things on a grand scale," replies Adolphe, taking refuge in a jest. "All men don't pay such attentions to their wives," says Caroline, curtly. "What attentions?" "Why, Adolphe, thinking of extra breadths and of a waist to make the dress good again, when it is no longer fit to be worn low in the neck." Adolphe says to himself, "Caroline wants a dress." Poor man!
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."
Caroline, the aerial Caroline, threatens to become like Madame Deschars. In vulgar language, she is getting stout. The maid leaves her in a state of consternation. "What! am I to have, like that fat Madame Deschars, cascades of flesh a la Rubens! That Adolphe is an awful scoundrel. Oh, I see, he wants to make me an old mother Gigogne, and destroy my powers of fascination!"
Some days afterward, during which Adolphe has been unusually attentive to his wife, he discourses to her as follows: "Caroline, dear, suppose we have a bit of fun: you'll put on your new gown the one like Madame Deschars! and we'll go to see a farce at the Varieties." This kind of proposition always puts a wife in the best possible humor. So away you go!
"You are lucky indeed," returns Madame Deschars with evident jealousy. "Still, a wife who discharges all her duties, deserves such luck, it seems to me." When this terrible sentiment falls from the lips of a married woman, it is clear that she does her duty, after the manner of school-boys, for the reward she expects. At school, a prize is the object: in marriage, a shawl or a piece of jewelry.
Madame Deschars is too prudish, Madame Foullepointe too absolute in her household, and she knows it; indeed, what doesn't she know? She is good-natured, she sees good society, she wishes to have the best: people overlook the vivacity of her witticisms, as, under louis XIV, they overlooked the remarks of Madame Cornuel.
"Monsieur Deschars does things on a grand scale," replies Adolphe, taking refuge in a jest. "All men don't pay such attentions to their wives," says Caroline, curtly. "What attentions?" "Why, Adolphe, thinking of extra breadths and of a waist to make the dress good again, when it is no longer fit to be worn low in the neck." Adolphe says to himself, "Caroline wants a dress." Poor man!
Madame Deschars is too prudish, Madame Foullepointe too absolute in her household, and she knows it; indeed, what doesn't she know? She is good-natured, she sees good society, she wishes to have the best: people overlook the vivacity of her witticisms, as, under louis XIV, they overlooked the remarks of Madame Cornuel.
At her house, no one dares risk a jest. Everything there is white and pink and perfumed with sanctity, as at the houses of widows who are approaching the confines of their third youth. It seems as if every day were Sunday there. You, a young husband, join the juvenile society of young women and girls, misses and young people, in the chamber of Madame Deschars.
For he has often drawn up leases of chateaux with parks and out-houses, for three thousand a year. It is agreed by everybody in the parlor of Madame Deschars, that a country house, so far from being a pleasure, is an unmitigated nuisance. "I don't see how they sell a cabbage for one sou at market, which has to be watered every day from its birth to the time you eat it," says Caroline.
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