They say in London, "Don"t touch the axe!" In France we ought to say, "Don"t touch a woman"s nose."
"And all this about a little extra natural vermilion!" exclaims Adolphe. "Complain about it to Providence, whose office it is to put a little more color in one place than another, not to me, who loves you, who desires you to be perfect, and who merely says to you, take care!"
"You love me too much, then, for you"ve been trying, for some time past, to find disagreeable things to say to me. You want to run me down under the pretext of making me perfect--people said I _was_ perfect, five years ago."
"I think you are better than perfect, you are stunning!"
"With too much vermilion?"
Adolphe, who sees the atmosphere of the north pole upon his wife"s face, sits down upon a chair by her side. Caroline, unable decently to go away, gives her gown a sort of flip on one side, as if to produce a separation. This motion is performed by some women with a provoking impertinence: but it has two significations; it is, as whist players would say, either a signal _for trumps_ or a _renounce_. At this time, Caroline renounces.
"What is the matter?" says Adolphe.
"Will you have a gla.s.s of sugar and water?" asks Caroline, busying herself about your health, and a.s.suming the part of a servant.
"What for?"
"You are not amiable while digesting, you must be in pain. Perhaps you would like a drop of brandy in your sugar and water? The doctor spoke of it as an excellent remedy."
"How anxious you are about my stomach!"
"It"s a centre, it communicates with the other organs, it will act upon your heart, and through that perhaps upon your tongue."
Adolphe gets up and walks about without saying a word, but he reflects upon the acuteness which his wife is acquiring: he sees her daily gaining in strength and in acrimony: she is getting to display an art in vexation and a military capacity for disputation which reminds him of Charles XII and the Russians. Caroline, during this time, is busy with an alarming piece of mimicry: she looks as if she were going to faint.
"Are you sick?" asks Adolphe, attacked in his generosity, the place where women always have us.
"It makes me sick at my stomach, after dinner, to see a man going back and forth so, like the pendulum of a clock. But it"s just like you: you are always in a fuss about something. You are a queer set: all men are more or less cracked."
Adolphe sits down by the fire opposite to his wife, and remains there pensive: marriage appears to him like an immense dreary plain, with its crop of nettles and mullen stalks.
"What, are you pouting?" asks Caroline, after a quarter of an hour"s observation of her husband"s countenance.
"No, I am meditating," replied Adolphe.
"Oh, what an infernal temper you"ve got!" she returns, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Is it for what I said about your stomach, your shape and your digestion? Don"t you see that I was only paying you back for your vermilion? You"ll make me think that men are as vain as women.
[Adolphe remains frigid.] It is really quite kind in you to take our qualities. [Profound silence.] I made a joke and you got angry [she looks at Adolphe], for you are angry. I am not like you: I cannot bear the idea of having given you pain! Nevertheless, it"s an idea that a man never would have had, that of attributing your impertinence to something wrong in your digestion. It"s not my Dolph, it"s his stomach that was bold enough to speak. I did not know you were a ventriloquist, that"s all."
Caroline looks at Adolphe and smiles: Adolphe is as stiff as if he were glued.
"No, he won"t laugh! And, in your jargon, you call this having character. Oh, how much better we are!"
She goes and sits down in Adolphe"s lap, and Adolphe cannot help smiling. This smile, extracted as if by a steam engine, Caroline has been on the watch for, in order to make a weapon of it.
"Come, old fellow, confess that you are wrong," she says. "Why pout?
Dear me, I like you just as you are: in my eyes you are as slender as when I married you, and slenderer perhaps."
"Caroline, when people get to deceive themselves in these little matters, where one makes concessions and the other does not get angry, do you know what it means?"
"What does it mean?" asks Caroline, alarmed at Adolphe"s dramatic att.i.tude.
"That they love each other less."
"Oh! you monster, I understand you: you were angry so as to make me believe you loved me!"
Alas! let us confess it, Adolphe tells the truth in the only way he can--by a laugh.
"Why give me pain?" she says. "If I am wrong in anything, isn"t it better to tell me of it kindly, than brutally to say [here she raises her voice], "Your nose is getting red!" No, that is not right! To please you, I will use an expression of the fair Fischtaminel, "It"s not the act of a gentleman!""
Adolphe laughs and pays the expenses of the reconciliation; but instead of discovering therein what will please Caroline and what will attach her to him, he finds out what attaches him to her.
NOSOGRAPHY OF THE VILLA.
Is it advantageous for a man not to know what will please his wife after their marriage? Some women (this still occurs in the country) are innocent enough to tell promptly what they want and what they like. But in Paris, nearly every woman feels a kind of enjoyment in seeing a man wistfully obedient to her heart, her desires, her caprices--three expressions for the same thing!--and anxiously going round and round, half crazy and desperate, like a dog that has lost his master.
They call this _being loved_, poor things! And a good many of them say to themselves, as did Caroline, "How will he manage?"
Adolphe has come to this. In this situation of things, the worthy and excellent Deschars, that model of the citizen husband, invites the couple known as Adolphe and Caroline to help him and his wife inaugurate a delightful country house. It is an opportunity that the Deschars have seized upon, the folly of a man of letters, a charming villa upon which he lavished one hundred thousand francs and which has been sold at auction for eleven thousand. Caroline has a new dress to air, or a hat with a weeping willow plume--things which a tilbury will set off to a charm. Little Charles is left with his grandmother. The servants have a holiday. The youthful pair start beneath the smile of a blue sky, flecked with milk-while clouds merely to heighten the effect. They breathe the pure air, through which trots the heavy Norman horse, animated by the influence of spring. They soon reach Marnes, beyond Ville d"Avray, where the Deschars are spreading themselves in a villa copied from one at Florence, and surrounded by Swiss meadows, though without all the objectionable features of the Alps.
"Dear me! what a delightful thing a country house like this must be!"
exclaims Caroline, as she walks in the admirable wood that skirts Marnes and Ville d"Avray. "It makes your eyes as happy as if they had a heart in them."
Caroline, having no one to take but Adolphe, takes Adolphe, who becomes her Adolphe again. And then you should see her run about like a fawn, and act once more the sweet, pretty, innocent, adorable school-girl that she was! Her braids come down! She takes off her bonnet, and holds it by the strings! She is young, pink and white again. Her eyes smile, her mouth is a pomegranate endowed with sensibility, with a sensibility which seems quite fresh.
"So a country house would please you very much, would it, darling?"
says Adolphe, clasping Caroline round the waist, and noticing that she leans upon him as if to show the flexibility of her form.
"What, will you be such a love as to buy me one? But remember, no extravagance! Seize an opportunity like the Deschars."
"To please you and to find out what is likely to give you pleasure, such is the constant study of your own Dolph."
They are alone, at liberty to call each other their little names of endearment, and run over the whole list of their secret caresses.
"Does he really want to please his little girly?" says Caroline, resting her head on the shoulder of Adolphe, who kisses her forehead, saying to himself, "Gad! I"ve got her now!"
Axiom.--When a husband and a wife have got each other, the devil only knows which has got the other.
The young couple are captivating, whereupon the stout Madame Deschars gives utterance to a remark somewhat equivocal for her, usually so stern, prudish and devout.
"Country air has one excellent property: it makes husbands very amiable."
M. Deschars points out an opportunity for Adolphe to seize. A house is to be sold at Ville d"Avray, for a song, of course. Now, the country house is a weakness peculiar to the inhabitant of Paris. This weakness, or disease, has its course and its cure. Adolphe is a husband, but not a doctor. He buys the house and takes possession with Caroline, who has become once more his Caroline, his Carola, his fawn, his treasure, his girly girl.
The following alarming symptoms now succeed each other with frightful rapidity: a cup of milk, baptized, costs five sous; when it is anhydrous, as the chemists say, ten sous. Meat costs more at Sevres than at Paris, if you carefully examine the qualities. Fruit cannot be had at any price. A fine pear costs more in the country than in the (anhydrous!) garden that blooms in Chevet"s window.