Parisian women,
are the prettiest jewels that social industry has invented. Those who
do not adore them, those who do not feel a constant jubilation at seeing
them laying their plots while braiding their hair, creating special
idioms for themselves and constructing with their slender fingers
machines strong enough to destroy the most powerful fortunes, must be
wanting in a positive sense.

On one occasion Caroline takes the most minute precautions. She writes
the day before to Madame Foullepointe to go to St. Maur with Adolphe,
to look at a piece of property for sale there. Adolphe would go to
breakfast with her. She aids Adolphe in dressing. She twits him with the
care he bestows upon his toilet, and asks absurd questions about Madame
Foullepointe.

"She's real nice, and I think she is quite tired of Charles: you'll
inscribe her yet upon your catalogue, you old Don Juan: but you won't
have any further need of Chaumontel's affair; I'm no longer jealous,
you've got a passport. Do you like that better than being adored?
Monster, observe how considerate I am."

So soon as her husband has gone, Caroline, who had not omitted, the
previous evening, to write to Ferdinand to come to breakfast with her,
equips herself in a costume which, in that charming eighteenth century
so calumniated by republicans, humanitarians and idiots, women of
quality called their fighting-dress.

Caroline has taken care of everything. Love is the first house servant
in the world, so the table is set with positively diabolic coquetry.
There is the white damask cloth, the little blue service, the silver
gilt urn, the chiseled milk pitcher, and flowers all round!

If it is winter, she has got some grapes, and has rummaged the cellar
for the very best old wine. The rolls are from the most famous baker's.
The succulent dishes, the _pate de foie gras_, the whole of this elegant
entertainment, would have made the author of the Glutton's Almanac neigh
with impatience: it would make a note-shaver smile, and tell a professor
of the old University what the matter in hand is.

Everything is prepared. Caroline has been ready since the night before:
she contemplates her work. Justine sighs and arranges the furniture.
Caroline picks off the yellow leaves of the plants in the windows. A
woman, in these cases, disguises what we may call the prancings of the
heart, by those meaningless occupations in which the fingers have all
the grip of pincers, when the pink