round the waist, and noticing that she leans
upon him as if to show the flexibility of her form.

"What, will you be such a love as to buy me one? But remember, no
extravagance! Seize an opportunity like the Deschars."

"To please you and to find out what is likely to give you pleasure, such
is the constant study of your own Dolph."

They are alone, at liberty to call each other their little names of
endearment, and run over the whole list of their secret caresses.

"Does he really want to please his little girly?" says Caroline, resting
her head on the shoulder of Adolphe, who kisses her forehead, saying to
himself, "Gad! I've got her now!"

Axiom.--When a husband and a wife have got each other, the devil only
knows which has got the other.

The young couple are captivating, whereupon the stout Madame Deschars
gives utterance to a remark somewhat equivocal for her, usually so
stern, prudish and devout.

"Country air has one excellent property: it makes husbands very
amiable."

M. Deschars points out an opportunity for Adolphe to seize. A house is
to be sold at Ville d'Avray, for a song, of course. Now, the country
house is a weakness peculiar to the inhabitant of Paris. This weakness,
or disease, has its course and its cure. Adolphe is a husband, but not
a doctor. He buys the house and takes possession with Caroline, who has
become once more his Caroline, his Carola, his fawn, his treasure, his
girly girl.

The following alarming symptoms now succeed each other with frightful
rapidity: a cup of milk, baptized, costs five sous; when it is
anhydrous, as the chemists say, ten sous. Meat costs more at Sevres than
at Paris, if you carefully examine the qualities. Fruit cannot be had
at any price. A fine pear costs more in the country than in the
(anhydrous!) garden that blooms in Chevet's window.

Before being able to raise fruit for oneself, from a Swiss meadow
measuring two square yards, surrounded by a few green trees which look
as if they were borrowed 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 m