ABOR.

Let us admit this, which, in our opinion, is a truism made as good as
new:

Axiom.--Most men have some of the wit required by a difficult
position, when they have not the whole of it.

As for those husbands who are not up to their situation, it is
impossible to consider their case here: without any struggle whatever
they simply enter the numerous class of the _Resigned_.

Adolphe says to himself: "Women are children: offer them a lump of
sugar, and you will easily get them to dance all the dances that
greedy children dance; but you must always have a sugar plum in hand,
hold it up pretty high, and--take care that their fancy for sweetmeats
does not leave them. Parisian women--and Caroline is one--are very
vain, and as for their voracity--don't speak of it. Now you cannot
govern men and make friends of them, unless you work upon them through
their vices, and flatter their passions: my wife is mine!"

Some days afterward, during which Adolphe has been unusually attentive
to his wife, he discourses to her as follows:

"Caroline, dear, suppose we have a bit of fun: you'll put on your new
gown--the one like Madame Deschars!--and we'll go to see a farce at
the Varieties."

This kind of proposition always puts a wife in the best possible
humor. So away you go! Adolphe has ordered a dainty little dinner for
two, at Borrel's _Rocher de Cancale_.

"As we are going to the Varieties, suppose we dine at the tavern,"
exclaims Adolphe, on the boulevard, with the air of a man suddenly
struck by a generous idea.

Caroline, delighted with this appearance of good fortune, enters a
little parlor where she finds the cloth laid and that neat little
service set, which Borrel places at the disposal of those who are rich
enough to pay for the quarters intended for the great ones of the
earth, who make themselves small for an hour.

Women eat little at a formal dinner: their concealed harness hampers
them, they are laced tightly, and they are in the presence of women
whose eyes and whose tongues are equally to be dreaded. They prefer
fancy eating to good eating, then: they will suck a lobster's claw,
swallow a quail or two, punish a woodcock's wing, beginning with a bit
of fresh fish, flavored by one of those sauces which are the glory of
French cooking. France is everywhere sovereign in matters of taste: in
painting, fashions, and the like. Gravy is the triumph of taste, in
cookery. So that grisettes, shopkeepers' wives