She got along as far as Sunday, the day when her presentiments, which
had now reached a state of paroxysm, told her that the longed-for
husband would arrive at an early hour.

When a pious woman expects her husband, and that husband has been absent
from home nearly four months, she takes much more pains with her toilet
than a young girl does, though waiting for her first betrothed.

This virtuous Caroline was so completely absorbed in exclusively
personal preparations, that she forgot to go to eight o'clock mass. She
proposed to hear a low mass, but she was afraid of losing the delight of
her dear Adolphe's first glance, in case he arrived at early dawn.
Her chambermaid--who respectfully left her mistress alone in the
dressing-room where pious and pimpled ladies let no one enter, not even
their husbands, especially if they are thin--her chambermaid heard her
exclaim several times, "If it's your master, let me know!"

The rumbling of a vehicle having made the furniture rattle, Caroline
assumed a mild tone to conceal the violence of her legitimate emotions.

"Oh! 'tis he! Run, Justine: tell him I am waiting for him here."
Caroline trembled so that she dropped into an arm-chair.

The vehicle was a butcher's wagon.

It was in anxieties like this that the eight o'clock mass slipped by,
like an eel in his slime. Madame's toilet operations were resumed, for
she was engaged in dressing. The chambermaid's nose had already been the
recipient of a superb muslin chemise, with a simple hem, which Caroline
had thrown at her from the dressing-room, though she had given her the
same kind for the last three months.

"What are you thinking of, Justine? I told you to choose from the
chemises that are not numbered."

The unnumbered chemises were only seven or eight, in the most
magnificent trousseau. They are chemises gotten up and embroidered with
the greatest care: a woman must be a queen, a young queen, to have a
dozen. Each one of Caroline's was trimmed with valenciennes round the
bottom, and still more coquettishly garnished about the neck. This
feature of our manners will perhaps serve to suggest a suspicion, in
the masculine world, of the domestic drama revealed by this exceptional
chemise.

Caroline had put on a pair of Scotch thread stockings, little prunella
buskins, and her most deceptive corsets. She had her hair dressed in the
fashion that most became her, and embellished it with a cap of the most
elegant form. It