from the scenic illusions of a theatre, the
most rural authorities, being consulted on the point, declare that you
must spend a great deal of money, and--wait five years! Vegetables
dash out of the husbandman's garden to reappear at the city market.
Madame Deschars, who possesses a gate-keeper that is at the same time
a gardener, confesses that the vegetables raised on her land, beneath
her glass frames, by dint of compost and top-soil, cost her twice as
much as those she used to buy at Paris, of a woman who had rent and
taxes to pay, and whose husband was an elector. Despite the efforts
and pledges of the gate-keeper-gardener, early peas and things at
Paris are a month in advance of those in the country.

From eight in the evening to eleven our couple don't know what to do,
on account of the insipidity of the neighbors, their small ideas, and
the questions of self-love which arise out of the merest trifles.

Monsieur Deschars remarks, with that profound knowledge of figures
which distinguishes the ex-notary, that the cost of going to Paris and
back, added to the interest of the cost of his villa, to the taxes,
wages of the gate-keeper and his wife, are equal to a rent of three
thousand francs a year. He does not see how he, an ex-notary, allowed
himself to be so caught! 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.

"The way to get along in the country," replies a little retired
grocer, "is to stay there, to live there, to become country-folks, and
then everything changes."

On going home, Caroline says to her poor Adolphe, "What an idea that
was of yours, to buy a country house! The best way to do about the
country is to go there on visits to other people."

Adolphe remembers an English proverb, which says, "Don't have a
newspaper or a country seat of your own: there are plenty of idiots
who will have them for you."

"Bah!" returns Adolph, who was enlightened once for all upon women's
logic by the Matrimonial Gadfly, "you are right: but then you know the
baby is in splendid health, here."

Though Adolphe has become prudent, this reply awakens Caroline's
susceptibiliti