fter 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
attitude.

"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