us shudder.

"You can't help laughing, you monster!"

"I laugh at your obstinacy."

"I'll go to-morrow to Madame de Fischtaminel's."

"Oh, go wherever you like!"

"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.

Two months after, he sells the villa which cost him twenty-two
thousand francs for seven thousand! But he gains this by the
adventure--he finds out that the country is not the thing that
Caroline wants.

The question is becoming serious. Nature, with its woods, its forests,
its valleys, the Switzerland of the environs of Paris, the artificial
rivers, have amused Caroline for barely six months. Adolphe is tempted
to abdicate and take Caroline's part himself.

A HOUSEHOLD REVOLUTION.

One morning, Adolphe is seized by the triumphant idea of letting
Caroline find out for herself what she wants. He gives up to her the
control of the house, saying, "Do as you like." He substitutes the
constitutional system for the autocratic system, a responsible
ministry for an absolute conjugal monarchy. This proof of confidence
--the object of much secret envy--is, to women, a field-marshal's
baton. Women are then, so to speak, mistresses at home.

After this, nothing, not even the memory of the honey-moon, can be
compared to Adolphe's happiness for several days. A woman, under such
circumstances, is all sugar. She is too sweet: she would invent the
art of petting and cosseting and of coining tender little names, if
this matrimonial sugar-plummery had not existed ever since the
Terrestrial Paradise. At the end of the month, Adolphe's condition is
like that of children towards the close of New Year's week. So
Caroline is beginning to say, not in words, but in acts, in manner, in
mimetic expressions: "It's difficult to tell _what_ to do to please a
man!"

Giving up the helm of the boat to one's wife, is an exceedingly
ordinary idea, and would hardly deserve the qualification of
"triumphant," which we have given it at the commencement of this
chapter, if it were not accompanied by that of taking it back again.
Adolphe was seduced by a wish, which invariably seizes persons who are
the prey of m