Pious women rarely go to church in a carriage, and they are right.
Except in the case of a pouring shower, or intolerably bad weather, a
person ought not to appear haughty in the place where it is becoming
to be humble. Caroline was afraid to compromise the freshness of her
dress and the purity of her thread stockings. Alas! these pretexts
concealed a reason.

"If I am at church when Adolphe comes, I shall lose the pleasure of
his first glance: and he will think I prefer high mass to him."

She made this sacrifice to her husband in a desire to please him--a
fearfully worldly consideration. Prefer the creature to the Creator! A
husband to heaven! Go and hear a sermon and you will learn what such
an offence will cost you.

"After all," says Caroline, quoting her confessor, "society is founded
upon marriage, which the Church has included among its sacraments."

And this is the way in which religious instruction may be put aside in
favor of a blind though legitimate love. Madame refused breakfast, and
ordered the meal to be kept hot, just as she kept herself ready, at a
moment's notice, to welcome the precious absentee.

Now these little things may easily excite a laugh: but in the first
place they are continually occurring with couples who love each other,
or where one of them loves the other: besides, in a woman so
strait-laced, so reserved, so worthy, as this lady, these
acknowledgments of affection went beyond the limits imposed upon her
feelings by the lofty self-respect which true piety induces. When
Madame de Fischtaminel narrated this little scene in a devotee's life,
dressing it up with choice by-play, acted out as ladies of the world
know how to act out their anecdotes, I took the liberty of saying that
it was the Canticle of canticles in action.

"If her husband doesn't come," said Justine to the cook, "what will
become of us? She has already thrown her chemise in my face."

At last, Caroline heard the crack of a postilion's whip, the
well-known rumbling of a traveling carriage, the racket made by the
hoofs of post-horses, and the jingling of their bells! Oh, she could
doubt no longer, the bells made her burst forth, as thus:

"The door! Open the door! 'Tis he, my husband! Will you never go to
the door!" And the pious woman stamped her foot and broke the
bell-rope.

"Why, madame," said Justine, with the vivacity of a servant doing her
duty, "it's some people going away."

"Upon my word," replied Carol