ngest headdresses.
Alexandrine has resolved to instruct her daughter by her example; she is
delightful and happy. And yet this is a trouble, a petty one for you, a
serious one for your son-in-law. This annoyance is of the two sexes,
it is common to you and your wife. In short, in this instance, your
paternity renders you all the more proud from the fact that it is
incontestable, my dear sir!

REVELATIONS.

Generally speaking, a young woman does not exhibit her true character
till she has been married two or three years. She hides her faults,
without intending it, in the midst of her first joys, of her first
parties of pleasure. She goes into society to dance, she visits her
relatives to show you off, she journeys on with an escort of love's
first wiles; she is gradually transformed from girlhood to womanhood.
Then she becomes mother and nurse, and in this situation, full of
charming pangs, that leaves neither a word nor a moment for observation,
such are its multiplied cares, it is impossible to judge of a woman. You
require, then, three or four years of intimate life before you discover
an exceedingly melancholy fact, one that gives you cause for constant
terror.

Your wife, the young lady in whom the first pleasures of life and love
supplied the place of grace and wit, so arch, so animated, so vivacious,
whose least movements spoke with delicious eloquence, has cast off,
slowly, one by one, her natural artifices. At last you perceive the
truth! You try to disbelieve it, you think yourself deceived; but no:
Caroline lacks intellect, she is dull, she can neither joke nor reason,
sometimes she has little tact. You are frightened. You find yourself
forever obliged to lead this darling through the thorny paths, where you
must perforce leave your self-esteem in tatters.

You have already been annoyed several times by replies that, in society,
were politely received: people have held their tongues instead of
smiling; but you were certain that after your departure the women looked
at each other and said: "Did you hear Madame Adolphe?"

"Your little woman, she is--"

"A regular cabbage-head."

"How could he, who is certainly a man of sense, choose--?"

"He should educate, teach his wife, or make her hold her tongue."

AXIOMS.

Axiom.--In our system of civilization a man is entirely responsible for
his wife.

Axiom.--The husband does not mould the wife.

Caroline has one day obstinately maintaine