of the whole sex is to take
vengeance on some one."

Adolphe might go on pulling "The Lotus" to pieces; Caroline's ears are
full of the tinkling of bells. She is like the woman who threw herself
over the Pont des Arts, and tried to find her way ten feet below the
level of the Seine.

ANOTHER STYLE. Caroline, in her paroxysms of jealousy, has discovered a
hiding place used by Adolphe, who, as he can't trust his wife, and as he
knows she opens his letters and rummages in his drawers, has endeavored
to save his correspondence with Hector from the hooked fingers of the
conjugal police.

Hector is an old schoolmate, who has married in the Loire Inferieure.

Adolphe lifts up the cloth of his writing desk, a cloth the border of
which has been embroidered by Caroline, the ground being blue, black
or red velvet,--the color, as you see, is perfectly immaterial,--and he
slips his unfinished letters to Madame de Fischtaminel, to his friend
Hector, between the table and the cloth.

The thickness of a sheet of paper is almost nothing, velvet is a downy,
discreet material, but, no matter, these precautions are in vain. The
male devil is fairly matched by the female devil: Tophet will furnish
them of all genders. Caroline has Mephistopheles on her side, the demon
who causes tables to spurt forth fire, and who, with his ironic finger
points out the hiding place of keys--the secret of secrets.

Caroline has noticed the thickness of a letter sheet between this velvet
and this table: she hits upon a letter to Hector instead of hitting upon
one to Madame de Fischtaminel, who has gone to Plombieres Springs, and
reads the following:

"My dear Hector:

"I pity you, but you have acted wisely in entrusting me with a knowledge
of the difficulties in which you have voluntarily involved yourself. You
never would see the difference between the country woman and the woman
of Paris. In the country, my dear boy, you are always face to face
with your wife, and, owing to the ennui which impels you, you rush
headforemost into the enjoyment of your bliss. This is a great error:
happiness is an abyss, and when you have once reached the bottom, you
never get back again, in wedlock.

"I will show you why. Let me take, for your wife's sake, the shortest
path--the parable.

"I remember having made a journey from Paris to Ville-Parisis, in that
vehicle called a 'bus: distance, twenty miles: 'bus, lumbering: horse,
lame. Nothing amuses me more th