madame would not budge, unless she could go in her own
carriage. Always that carriage!

Adolphe held out, and would not yield.

Caroline, who was a woman of great sagacity, admitted that her husband
was right.

"Adolphe is right," she said to her friends, "it is I who am
unreasonable: he can not, he ought not, have a carriage yet: men know
better than we do the situation of their business."

At times Adolphe was perfectly furious! Women have ways about them that
demand the justice of Tophet itself. Finally, during the third month, he
met one of his school friends, a lieutenant in the corps of physicians,
modest as all young doctors are: he had had his epaulettes one day only,
and could give the order to fire!

"For a young woman, a young doctor," said our Adolphe to himself.

And he proposed to the future Bianchon to visit his wife and tell him
the truth about her condition.

"My dear, it is time that you should have a physician," said Adolphe
that evening to his wife, "and here is the best for a pretty woman."

The novice makes a conscientious examination, questions madame, feels
her pulse discreetly, inquires into the slightest symptoms, and, at
the end, while conversing, allows a smile, an expression, which, if
not ironical, are extremely incredulous, to play involuntarily upon his
lips, and his lips are quite in sympathy with his eyes. He prescribes
some insignificant remedy, and insists upon its importance, promising to
call again to observe its effect. In the ante-chamber, thinking himself
alone with his school-mate, he indulges in an inexpressible shrug of the
shoulders.

"There's nothing the matter with your wife, my boy," he says: "she is
trifling with both you and me."

"Well, I thought so."

"But if she continues the joke, she will make herself sick in earnest: I
am too sincerely your friend to enter into such a speculation, for I am
determined that there shall be an honest man beneath the physician, in
me--"

"My wife wants a carriage."

As in the _Solo on the Hearse_, this Caroline listened at the door.

Even at the present day, the young doctor is obliged to clear his path
of the calumnies which this charming woman is continually throwing into
it: and for the sake of a quiet life, he has been obliged to confess his
little error--a young man's error--and to mention his enemy by name, in
order to close her lips.

THE CHESTNUTS IN THE FIRE.

No one can tell how many shades and grada