l do more, I give you up my heart, my fortune! Your
husband wants to save _his_ honor, _my_ honor is at your disposal!"

"Sir," cries Caroline, as she tries to raise the syndic who has thrown
himself at her feet. "You alarm me!"

She plays the terrified female and thus reaches the door, getting out
of a delicate situation as women know how to do it, that is, without
compromising anything or anybody.

"I will come again," she says smiling, "when you behave better."

"You leave me thus! Take care! Your husband may yet find himself
seated at the bar of the Court of Assizes: he is accessory to a
fraudulent bankruptcy, and we know several things about him that are
not by any means honorable. It is not his first departure from
rectitude; he has done a good many dirty things, he has been mixed up
in disgraceful intrigues, and you are singularly careful of the honor
of a man who cares as little for his own honor as he does for yours."

Caroline, alarmed by these words, lets go the door, shuts it and comes
back.

"What do you mean, sir?" she exclaims, furious at this outrageous
broadside.

"Why, this affair--"

"Chaumontel's affair?"

"No, his speculations in houses that he had built by people that were
insolvent."

Caroline remembers the enterprise undertaken by Adolphe to double his
income: (See _The Jesuitism of Women_) she trembles. Her curiosity is
in the syndic's favor.

"Sit down here. There, at this distance, I will behave well, but I can
look at you."

And he narrates, at length, the conception due to du Tillet the
banker, interrupting himself to say: "Oh, what a pretty, cunning,
little foot; no one but you could have such a foot as that--_Du
Tillet, therefore, compromised._ What an ear, too! You have been
doubtless told that you had a delicious ear--_And du Tillet was
right, for judgment had already been given_--I love small ears, but
let me have a model of yours, and I will do anything you like--_du
Tillet profited by this to throw the whole loss on your idiotic
husband_: oh, what a charming silk, you are divinely dressed!"

"Where were we, sir?"

"How can I remember while admiring your Raphaelistic head?"

At the twenty-seventh compliment, Caroline considers the syndic a man
of wit: she makes him a polite speech, and goes away without learning
much more of the enterprise which, not long before had swallowed up
three hundred thousand francs.

There are many huge variations of this petty trouble.