SECOND EPOCH. The scene changes, at table. Everything is exceedingly dear. Vegetables are beyond one"s means. Wood sells as if it came from Campeche. Fruit? Oh! as to fruit, princes, bankers and great lords alone can eat it. Dessert is a cause of ruin. Adolphe often hears Caroline say to Madame Deschars: "How do you manage?" Conferences are held in your presence upon the proper way to keep cooks under the thumb.
A cook who entered your service without effects, without clothes, and without talent, has come to get her wages in a blue merino gown, set off by an embroidered neckerchief, her ears embellished with a pair of ear-rings enriched with small pearls, her feet clothed in comfortable shoes which give you a glimpse of neat cotton stockings. She has two trunks full of property, and keeps an account at the savings bank.
Upon this Caroline complains of the bad morals of the lower cla.s.ses: she complains of the education and the knowledge of figures which distinguish domestics. From time to time she utters little axioms like the following: There are some mistakes you _must_ make!--It"s only those who do nothing who do everything well.--She has the anxieties that belong to power.--Ah! men are fortunate in not having a house to keep.--Women bear the burden of the innumerable details.
THIRD EPOCH. Caroline, absorbed in the idea that you should eat merely to live, treats Adolphe to the delights of a cen.o.bitic table.
Adolphe"s stockings are either full of holes or else rough with the lichen of hasty mendings, for the day is not long enough for all that his wife has to do. He wears suspenders blackened by use. His linen is old and gapes like a door-keeper, or like the door itself. At a time when Adolphe is in haste to conclude a matter of business, it takes him an hour to dress: he has to pick out his garments one by one, opening many an article before finding one fit to wear. But Caroline is charmingly dressed. She has pretty bonnets, velvet boots, mantillas. She has made up her mind, she conducts her administration in virtue of this principle: Charity well understood begins at home.
When Adolphe complains of the contrast between his poverty-stricken wardrobe and Caroline"s splendor, she says, "Why, you reproached me with buying nothing for myself!"
The husband and the wife here begin to bandy jests more or less acrimonious. One evening Caroline makes herself very agreeable, in order to insinuate an avowal of a rather large deficit, just as the ministry begins to eulogize the tax-payers, and boast of the wealth of the country, when it is preparing to bring forth a bill for an additional appropriation. There is this further similitude that both are done in the chamber, whether in administration or in housekeeping.
From this springs the profound truth that the const.i.tutional system is infinitely dearer than the monarchical system. For a nation as for a household, it is the government of the happy balance, of mediocrity, of chicanery.
Adolphe, enlightened by his past annoyances, waits for an opportunity to explode, and Caroline slumbers in a delusive security.
What starts the quarrel? Do we ever know what electric current precipitates the avalanche or decides a revolution? It may result from anything or nothing. But finally, Adolphe, after a period to be determined in each case by the circ.u.mstances of the couple, utters this fatal phrase, in the midst of a discussion: "Ah! when I was a bachelor!"
Her husband"s bachelor life is to a woman what the phrase, "My dear deceased," is to a widow"s second husband. These two stings produce wounds which are never completely healed.
Then Adolphe goes on like General Bonaparte haranguing the Five Hundred: "We are on a volcano!--The house no longer has a head, the time to come to an understanding has arrived.--You talk of happiness, Caroline, but you have compromised, imperiled it by your exactions, you have violated the civil code: you have mixed yourself up in the discussions of business, and you have invaded the conjugal authority.
--We must reform our internal affairs."
Caroline does not shout, like the Five Hundred, "Down with the dictator!" For people never shout a man down, when they feel that they can put him down.
"When I was a bachelor I had none but new stockings! I had a clean napkin every day on my plate. The restaurateur only fleeced me of a determinate sum. I have given up to you my beloved liberty! What have you done with it?"
"Am I then so very wrong, Adolphe, to have sought to spare you numerous cares?" says Caroline, taking an att.i.tude before her husband.
"Take the key of the money-box back,--but do you know what will happen? I am ashamed, but you will compel me to go on to the stage to get the merest necessaries of life. Is this what you want? Degrade your wife, or bring in conflict two contrary, hostile interests--"
Such, for three quarters of the French people is an exact definition of marriage.
"Be perfectly easy, dear," resumes Caroline, seating herself in her chair like Marius on the ruins of Carthage, "I will never ask you for anything. I am not a beggar! I know what I"ll do--you don"t know me yet."
"Well, what will you do?" asks Adolphe; "it seems impossible to joke or have an explanation with you women. What will you do?"
"It doesn"t concern you at all."
"Excuse me, madame, quite the contrary. Dignity, honor--"
"Oh, have no fear of that, sir. For your sake more than for my own, I will keep it a dead secret."
"Come, Caroline, my own Carola, what do you mean to do?"
Caroline darts a viper-like glance at Adolphe, who recoils and proceeds to walk up and down the room.
"There now, tell me, what will you do?" he repeats after much too prolonged a silence.
"I shall go to work, sir!"
At this sublime declaration, Adolphe executes a movement in retreat, detecting a bitter exasperation, and feeling the sharpness of a north wind which had never before blown in the matrimonial chamber.
THE ART OF BEING A VICTIM.
On and after the Revolution, our vanquished Caroline adopts an infernal system, the effect of which is to make you regret your victory every hour. She becomes the opposition! Should Adolphe have one more such triumph, he would appear before the Court of a.s.sizes, accused of having smothered his wife between two mattresses, like Shakespeare"s Oth.e.l.lo. Caroline puts on the air of a martyr; her submission is positively killing. On every occasion she a.s.sa.s.sinates Adolphe with a "Just as you like!" uttered in tones whose sweetness is something fearful. 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."
AFTER DINNER. "What, not dressed yet, Caroline?" exclaims Adolphe, who has just made his appearance, magnificently equipped.
He finds Caroline arrayed in a gown fit for an elderly lady of strong conversational powers, a black moire with an old-fashioned fan-waist.
Flowers, too badly imitated to deserve the name of artificial, give a gloomy aspect to a head of hair which the chambermaid has carelessly arranged. Caroline"s gloves have already seen wear and tear.
"I am ready, my dear."
"What, in that dress?"
"I have no other. A new dress would have cost three hundred francs."
"Why did you not tell me?"
"I, ask you for anything, after what has happened!"
"I"ll go alone," says Adolphe, unwilling to be humiliated in his wife.
"I dare say you are very glad to," returns Caroline, in a captious tone, "it"s plain enough from the way you are got up."
Eleven persons are in the parlor, all invited to dinner by Adolphe.
Caroline is there, looking as if her husband had invited her too. She is waiting for dinner to be served.
"Sir," says the parlor servant in a whisper to his master, "the cook doesn"t know what on earth to do!"
"What"s the matter?"
"You said nothing to her, sir: and she has only two side-dishes, the beef, a chicken, a salad and vegetables."
"Caroline, didn"t you give the necessary orders?"
"How did I know that you had company, and besides I can"t take it upon myself to give orders here! You delivered me from all care on that point, and I thank heaven for it every day of my life."
Madame de Fischtaminel has called to pay Madame Caroline a visit. She finds her coughing feebly and nearly bent double over her embroidery.