Your son, moreover, gives you a cold sweat, if your razors happen to be out of their place. If you are angry, the little rebel laughs and shows his two rows of pearls: if you scold him, he cries. His mother rushes in! And what a mother she is! A mother who will detest you if you don’t give him the razor! With women there is no middle ground; a man is either a monster or a model.
At certain times you perfectly understand Herod and his famous decrees relative to the Massacre of the Innocents, which have only been surpassed by those of the good Charles X!
Your wife has returned to her sofa, you walk up and down, and stop, and you boldly introduce the subject by this interjectional remark:
“Caroline, we must send Charles to boarding school.”
“Charles cannot go to boarding school,” she returns in a mild tone.
“Charles is six years old, the age at which a boy’s education begins.”
“In the first place,” she replies, “it begins at seven. The royal princes are handed over to their governor by their governess when they are seven. That’s the law and the prophets. I don’t see why you shouldn’t apply to the children of private people the rule laid down for the children of princes. Is your son more forward than theirs? The king of Rome—”
“The king of Rome is not a case in point.”
“What! Is not the king of Rome the son of the Emperor? [Here she changes the subject.] Well, I declare, you accuse the Empress, do you? Why, Doctor Dubois himself was present, besides—”
“I said nothing of the kind.”