freedom of her style of dancing.

You return home, you have frantically hurried your Norman horse,
and have neither prevented an indisposition of the animal, nor an
indisposition of your wife.

That evening, Caroline has very little milk. If the baby cries and
if your head is split in consequence, it is all your fault, as you
preferred the health of your horse to that of your son who was dying
of hunger, and of your daughter whose supper has disappeared in a
discussion in which your wife was right, _as she always is_.

"Well, well," she says, "men are not mothers!"

As you leave the chamber, you hear your mother-in-law consoling her
daughter by these terrible words: "Come, be calm, Caroline: that's the
way with them all: they are a selfish lot: your father was just like
that!"

THE ULTIMATUM.

It is eight o'clock; you make your appearance in the bedroom of your
wife. There is a brilliant light. The chambermaid and the cook hover
lightly about. The furniture is covered with dresses and flowers tried
on and laid aside.

The hair-dresser is there, an artist par excellence, a sovereign
authority, at once nobody and everything. You hear the other domestics
going and coming: orders are given and recalled, errands are well or ill
performed. The disorder is at its height. This chamber is a studio from
whence to issue a parlor Venus.

Your wife desires to be the fairest at the ball which you are to attend.
Is it still for your sake, or only for herself, or is it for somebody
else? Serious questions these.

The idea does not even occur to you.

You are squeezed, hampered, harnessed in your ball accoutrement:
you count your steps as you walk, you look around, you observe, you
contemplate talking business on neutral ground with a stock-broker, a
notary or a banker, to whom you would not like to give an advantage over
you by calling at their house.

A singular fact which all have probably observed, but the causes of
which can hardly be determined, is the peculiar repugnance which men
dressed and ready to go to a party have for discussions or to answer
questions. At the moment of starting, there are few husbands who are not
taciturn and profoundly absorbed in reflections which vary with their
characters. Those who reply give curt and peremptory answers.

But women, at this time, are exceedingly aggravating. They consult you,
they ask your advice upon the best way of concealing the stem of a rose,
of giving a gra