Caroline remembers the enterprise undertaken by Adolphe to double his income: (See The Jesuitism of Women) she trembles. Her curiosity is in the syndic’s favor.
“Sit down here. There, at this distance, I will behave well, but I can look at you.”
And he narrates, at length, the conception due to du Tillet the banker, interrupting himself to say: “Oh, what a pretty, cunning, little foot; no one but you could have such a foot as that—Du Tillet, therefore, compromised. What an ear, too! You have been doubtless told that you had a delicious ear—And du Tillet was right, for judgment had already been given—I love small ears, but let me have a model of yours, and I will do anything you like—du Tillet profited by this to throw the whole loss on your idiotic husband: oh, what a charming silk, you are divinely dressed!”
“Where were we, sir?”
“How can I remember while admiring your Raphaelistic head?”
At the twenty-seventh compliment, Caroline considers the syndic a man of wit: she makes him a polite speech, and goes away without learning much more of the enterprise which, not long before had swallowed up three hundred thousand francs.
There are many huge variations of this petty trouble.
EXAMPLE. Adolphe is brave and susceptible: he is walking on the Champs Elysees, where there is a crowd of people; in this crowd are several ill-mannered young men who indulge in jokes of doubtful propriety: Caroline puts up with them and pretends not to hear them, in order to keep her husband out of a duel.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE. A child belonging to the genus Terrible, exclaims in the presence of everybody:
“Mamma, would you let Justine hit me?”