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 nails burn, and when this unspoken exclamation rasps the throat: “He hasn’t come yet!”
What a blow is this announcement by Justine: “Madame, here’s a letter!”
A letter in place of Ferdinand! How does she ever open it? What ages of life slip by as she unfolds it! Women know this by experience! As to men, when they are in such maddening passes, they murder their shirt-frills.
“Justine, Monsieur Ferdinand is ill!” exclaims Caroline. “Send for a carriage.”
As Justine goes down stairs, Adolphe comes up.
“My poor mistress!” observes Justine. “I guess she won’t want the carriage now.”
“Oh my! Where have you come from?” cries Caroline, on seeing Adolphe standing in ecstasy before her voluptuous breakfast.
Adolphe, whose wife long since gave up treating him to such charming banquets, does not answer. But he guesses what it all means, as he sees the cloth inscribed with the delightful ideas which Madame de Fischtaminel or the syndic of Chaumontel’s affair have often inscribed for him upon tables quite as elegant.
“Whom are you expecting?” he asks in his turn.