p the wink to the riding-master, to disgust her with
equestrianism by the harshness of his style of instruction.

There is nothing so terrible as an actress who reckons upon a success,
and who _fait four_.

In the language of the stage, to _faire four_ is to play to a wretchedly
thin house, or to obtain not the slightest applause. It is taking great
pains for nothing, in short a _signal failure_.

This petty trouble--it is very petty--is reproduced in a thousand ways
in married life, when the honey-moon is over, and when the wife has no
personal fortune.

In spite of the author's repugnance to inserting anecdotes in an
exclusively aphoristic work, the tissue of which will bear nothing
but the most delicate and subtle observations,--from the nature of the
subject at least,--it seems to him necessary to illustrate this page by
an incident narrated by one of our first physicians. This repetition of
the subject involves a rule of conduct very much in use with the doctors
of Paris.

A certain husband was in our Adolphe's situation. His Caroline, having
once made a signal failure, was determined to conquer, for Caroline
often does conquer! (See _The Physiology of Marriage_, Meditation XXVI,
Paragraph _Nerves_.) She had been lying about on the sofas for two
months, getting up at noon, taking no part in the amusements of
the city. She would not go to the theatre,--oh, the disgusting
atmosphere!--the lights, above all, the lights! Then the bustle, coming
out, going in, the music,--it might be fatal, it's so terribly exciting!

She would not go on excursions to the country, oh, certainly it was her
desire to do so!--but she would like (desiderata) a carriage of her own,
horses of her own--her husband would not give her an equipage. And as to
going in hacks, in hired conveyances, the bare thought gave her a rising
at the stomach!

She would not have any cooking--the smell of the meats produced a sudden
nausea. She drank innumerable drugs that her maid never saw her take.

In short, she expended large amounts of time and money in attitudes,
privations, effects, pearl-white to give her the pallor of a corpse,
machinery, and the like, precisely as when the manager of a theatre
spreads rumors about a piece gotten up in a style of Oriental
magnificence, without regard to expense!

This couple had got so far as to believe that even a journey to the
springs, to Ems, to Hombourg, to Carlsbad, would hardly cure the
invalid: but