For three, sometimes six, months, Caroline executes the most brilliant concertos and solos upon this delicious theme: "I shall be rich! I shall have a thousand a month for my dress: I am going to keep my carriage!"
If your son is alluded to, it is merely to ask about the school to which he shall be sent.
SECOND PERIOD.—"Well, dear, how is your business getting on?—What has become of it?—How about that speculation which was to give me a carriage, and other things?—It is high time that affair should come to something.—It is a good while cooking.—When will it begin to pay? Is the stock going up?—There's nobody like you for hitting upon ventures that never amount to anything."
One day she says to you, "Is there really an affair?"
If you mention it eight or ten months after, she returns:
"Ah! Then there really is an affair!"
This woman, whom you thought dull, begins to show signs of extraordinary wit, when her object is to make fun of you. During this period, Caroline maintains a compromising silence when people speak of you, or else she speaks disparagingly of men in general: "Men are not what they seem: to find them out you must try them." "Marriage has its good and its bad points." "Men never can finish anything."
THIRD PERIOD.—Catastrophe.—This magnificent affair which was to yield five hundred per cent, in which the most cautious, the best informed persons took part—peers, deputies, bankers—all of them Knights of the Legion of Honor—this venture has been obliged to liquidate! The most sanguine expect to get ten per cent of their capital back. You are discouraged.
Caroline has often said to you, "Adolphe, what is the matter? Adolphe, there is something wrong."
Finally, you acquaint Caroline with the fatal result: she begins by consoling you.