This source of petty troubles is pointed out here, in order that women
seated upon the river's bank may contemplate in it the course of their
own married life, following its ascent or descent, recalling their own
adventures to mind, their untold disasters, the foibles which caused
their errors, and the peculiar fatalities to which were due an instant
of frenzy, a moment of unnecessary despair, or sufferings which they
might have spared themselves, happy in their self-delusions.

This vexation has a corollary in the following, one which is much more
serious and often without remedy, especially when its root lies among
vices of another kind, and which do not concern us, for, in this work,
women are invariably esteemed honest--until the end.

THE DOMESTIC TYRANT.

"My dear Caroline," says Adolphe one day to his wife, "are you satisfied
with Justine?"

"Yes, dear, quite so."

"Don't you think she speaks to you rather impertinently?"

"Do you suppose I would notice a maid? But it seems _you_ notice her!"

"What do you say?" asks Adolphe in an indignant way that is always
delightful to women.

Justine is a genuine maid for an actress, a woman of thirty stamped by
the small-pox with innumerable dimples, in which the loves are far from
sporting: she is as brown as opium, has a good deal of leg and not much
body, gummy eyes, and a tournure to match. She would like to have Benoit
marry her, but at this unexpected suggestion, Benoit asked for his
discharge. Such is the portrait of the domestic tyrant enthroned by
Caroline's jealousy.

Justine takes her coffee in the morning, in bed, and manages to have
it as good as, not to say better than, that of her mistress. Justine
sometimes goes out without asking leave, dressed like the wife of a
second-class banker. She sports a pink hat, one of her mistress' old
gowns made over, an elegant shawl, shoes of bronze kid, and jewelry of
doubtful character.

Justine is sometimes in a bad humor, and makes her mistress feel that
she too is a woman like herself, though she is not married. She has her
whims, her fits of melancholy, her caprices. She even dares to have her
nerves! She replies curtly, she makes herself insupportable to the other
servants, and, to conclude, her wages have been considerably increased.

"My dear, this girl is getting more intolerable every day," says Adolphe
one morning to his wife, on noticing Justine listening at the key-hole,
"and if you don't sen