“Take care, Caroline,” says Adolphe, who has not forgotten his many vain efforts to please her.  “I think your nose has the impertinence to redden at home quite well as at the restaurant.”

“This is not one of your amiable days!”

General Rule.—­No man has ever yet discovered the way to give friendly advice to any woman, not even to his own wife.

“Perhaps it’s because you are laced too tight.  Women make themselves sick that way.”

The moment a man utters these words to a woman, no matter whom, that woman,—­who knows that stays will bend,—­seizes her corset by the lower end, and bends it out, saying, with Caroline: 

“Look, you can get your hand in!  I never lace tight.”

“Then it must be your stomach.”

“What has the stomach got to do with the nose?”

“The stomach is a centre which communicates with all the organs.”

“So the nose is an organ, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Your organ is doing you a poor service at this moment.”  She raises her eyes and shrugs her shoulders.  “Come, Adolphe, what have I done?”

“Nothing.  I’m only joking, and I am unfortunate enough not to please you,” returns Adolphe, smiling.

“My misfortune is being your wife!  Oh, why am I not somebody else’s!”

“That’s what I say!”

“If I were, and if I had the innocence to say to you, like a coquette who wishes to know how far she has got with a man, ’the redness of my nose really gives me anxiety,’ you would look at me in the glass with all the affectations of an ape, and would reply, ’O madame, you do yourself an injustice; in the first place, nobody sees it:  besides, it harmonizes with your complexion; then again we are all so after dinner!’ and from this you would go on to flatter me.  Do I ever tell you that you are growing fat, that you are getting the color of a stone-cutter, and that I prefer thin and pale men?”

They say in London, “Don’t touch the axe!” In France we ought to say, “Don’t touch a woman’s nose.”

“And all this about a little extra natural vermilion!” exclaims Adolphe.  “Complain about it to Providence, whose office it is to put a little more color in one place than another, not to me, who loves you, who desires you to be perfect, and who merely says to you, take care!”

“You love me too much, then, for you’ve been trying, for some time past, to find disagreeable things to say to me.  You want to run me down under the pretext of making me perfect—­people said I was perfect, five years ago.”

“I think you are better than perfect, you are stunning!”

“With too much vermilion?”

Adolphe, who sees the atmosphere of the north pole upon his wife’s face, sits down upon a chair by her side.  Caroline, unable decently to go away, gives her gown a sort of flip on one side, as if to produce a separation.  This motion is performed by some women with a provoking impertinence:  but it has two significations; it is, as whist players would say, either a signal for trumps or a renounce.  At this time, Caroline renounces.