, my dear" (sometimes she knows it two days beforehand), "I
have got to get up early." Unfortunate Adolphe, you have especially
proved the importance of this appointment: "It's to--and to--and above
all to--in short to--"

Two hours before dawn, Caroline wakes you up gently and says to you
softly: "Adolphy dear, Adolphy love!"

"What's the matter? Fire?"

"No, go to sleep again, I've made a mistake; but the hour hand was on
it, any way! It's only four, you can sleep two hours more."

Is not telling a man, "You've only got two hours to sleep," the same
thing, on a small scale, as saying to a criminal, "It's five in the
morning, the ceremony will be performed at half-past seven"? Such sleep
is troubled by an idea dressed in grey and furnished with wings, which
comes and flaps, like a bat, upon the windows of your brain.

A woman in a case like this is as exact as a devil coming to claim a
soul he has purchased. When the clock strikes five, your wife's voice,
too well known, alas! resounds in your ear; she accompanies the stroke,
and says with an atrocious calmness, "Adolphe, it's five o'clock, get
up, dear."

"Ye-e-e-s, ah-h-h-h!"

"Adolphe, you'll be late for your business, you said so yourself."

"Ah-h-h-h, ye-e-e-e-s." You turn over in despair.

"Come, come, love. I got everything ready last night; now you must, my
dear; do you want to miss him? There, up, I say; it's broad daylight."

Caroline throws off the blankets and gets up: she wants to show you that
_she_ can rise without making a fuss. She opens the blinds, she lets in
the sun, the morning air, the noise of the street, and then comes back.

"Why, Adolphe, you _must_ get up! Who ever would have supposed you had
no energy! But it's just like you men! I am only a poor, weak woman, but
when I say a thing, I do it."

You get up grumbling, execrating the sacrament of marriage. There is not
the slightest merit in your heroism; it wasn't you, but your wife,
that got up. Caroline gets you everything you want with provoking
promptitude; she foresees everything, she gives you a muffler in winter,
a blue-striped cambric shirt in summer, she treats you like a child; you
are still asleep, she dresses you and has all the trouble. She finally
thrusts you out of doors. Without her nothing would go straight! She
calls you back to give you a paper, a pocketbook, you had forgotten. You
don't think of anything, she thinks of everything!

You return five hours afterw