______

Total, Francs, 192.50

Caroline examines the dates and remembers them as appointments made for
business connected with Chaumontel's affair. Adolphe had designated the
sixth of January as the day fixed for a meeting at which the creditors
in Chaumontel's affair were to receive the sums due them. On the
eleventh of February he had an appointment with the notary, in order to
sign a receipt relative to Chaumontel's affair.

Or else--but an attempt to mention all the chances of discovery would be
the undertaking of a madman.

Every woman will remember to herself how the bandage with which her eyes
were bound fell off: how, after many doubts, and agonies of heart,
she made up her mind to have a final quarrel for the simple purpose of
finishing the romance, putting the seal to the book, stipulating for her
independence, or beginning life over again.

Some women are fortunate enough to have anticipated their husbands, and
they then have the quarrel as a sort of justification.

Nervous women give way to a burst of passion and commit acts of
violence.

Women of mild temper assume a decided tone which appalls the most
intrepid husbands. Those who have no vengeance ready shed a great many
tears.

Those who love you forgive you. Ah, they conceive so readily, like the
woman called "Ma berline," that their Adolphe must be loved by the women
of France, that they are rejoiced to possess, legally, a man about whom
everybody goes crazy.

Certain women with lips tight shut like a vise, with a muddy complexion
and thin arms, treat themselves to the malicious pleasure of promenading
their Adolphe through the quagmire of falsehood and contradiction:
they question him (see _Troubles within Troubles_), like a magistrate
examining a criminal, reserving the spiteful enjoyment of crushing
his denials by positive proof at a decisive moment. Generally, in this
supreme scene of conjugal life, the fair sex is the executioner, while,
in the contrary case, man is the assassin.

This is the way of it: This last quarrel (you shall know why the author
has called it the _last_), is always terminated by a solemn, sacred
promise, made by scrupulous, noble, or simply intelligent women (that is
to say, by all women), and which we give here in its grandest form.

"Enough, Adolphe! We love each other no more; you have deceived me, and
I shall never forget