Caroline's soul, as to the question whether her husband is really as
handsome as she thinks him.

SECOND STYLE. Caroline, annoyed by the reputation of Madame Schinner,
who is credited with the possession of epistolary talents, and
styled the "Sevigne of the note", tired of hearing about Madame de
Fischtaminel, who has ventured to write a little 32mo book on the
education of the young, in which she has boldly reprinted Fenelon,
without the style:--Caroline has been working for six months upon a tale
tenfold poorer than those of Berquin, nauseatingly moral, and flamboyant
in style.

After numerous intrigues such as women are skillful in managing in the
interest of their vanity, and the tenacity and perfection of which would
lead you to believe that they have a third sex in their head, this tale,
entitled "The Lotus," appears in three installments in a leading daily
paper. It is signed Samuel Crux.

When Adolphe takes up the paper at breakfast, Caroline's heart beats up
in her very throat: she blushes, turns pale, looks away and stares at
the ceiling. When Adolphe's eyes settle upon the feuilleton, she can
bear it no longer: she gets up, goes out, comes back, having replenished
her stock of audacity, no one knows where.

"Is there a feuilleton this morning?" she asks with an air that she
thinks indifferent, but which would disturb a husband still jealous of
his wife.

"Yes, one by a beginner, Samuel Crux. The name is a disguise, clearly:
the tale is insignificant enough to drive an insect to despair, if he
could read: and vulgar, too: the style is muddy, but then it's--"

Caroline breathes again. "It's--" she suggests.

"It's incomprehensible," resumes Adolphe. "Somebody must have paid
Chodoreille five or six hundred francs to insert it; or else it's the
production of a blue-stocking in high society who has promised to invite
Madame Chodoreille to her house; or perhaps it's the work of a woman
in whom the editor is personally interested. Such a piece of stupidity
cannot be explained any other way. Imagine, Caroline, that it's all
about a little flower picked on the edge of a wood in a sentimental
walk, which a gentleman of the Werther school has sworn to keep, which
he has had framed, and which the lady claims again eleven years after
(the poor man has had time to change his lodgings three times). It's
quite new, about as old as Sterne or Gessner. What makes me think it's
a woman, is that the first literary idea