Adolphe listens to sarcasm for an hour by the clock.

“Have you done, dear?” he asks, profiting by an instant in which she tosses her head after a pointed interrogation.

Then Caroline concludes thus:  “I’ve had enough of the villa, and I’ll never set foot in it again.  But I know what will happen:  you’ll keep it, probably, and leave me in Paris.  Well, at Paris, I can at least amuse myself, while you go with Madame de Fischtaminel to the woods.  What is a Villa Adolphini where you get nauseated if you go six times round the lawn? where they’ve planted chair-legs and broom-sticks on the pretext of producing shade?  It’s like a furnace:  the walls are six inches thick! and my gentleman is absent seven hours a day!  That’s what a country seat means!”

“Listen to me, Caroline.”

“I wouldn’t so much mind, if you would only confess what you did to-day.  You don’t know me yet:  come, tell me, I won’t scold you.  I pardon you beforehand for all that you’ve done.”

Adolphe, who knows the consequences of a confession too well to make one to his wife, replies—­“Well, I’ll tell you.”

“That’s a good fellow—­I shall love you better.”

“I was three hours—­”

“I was sure of it—­at Madame de Fischtaminel’s!”

“No, at our notary’s, as he had got me a purchaser; but we could not come to terms:  he wanted our villa furnished.  When I left there, I went to Braschon’s, to see how much we owed him—­”

“You made up this romance while I was talking to you!  Look me in the face!  I’ll go to see Braschon to-morrow.”

Adolphe cannot restrain a nervous shudder.

“You can’t help laughing, you monster!”

“I laugh at your obstinacy.”

“I’ll go to-morrow to Madame de Fischtaminel’s.”

“Oh, go wherever you like!”

“What brutality!” says Caroline, rising and going away with her handkerchief at her eyes.

The country house, so ardently longed for by Caroline, has now become a diabolical invention of Adolphe’s, a trap into which the fawn has fallen.

Since Adolphe’s discovery that it is impossible to reason with
Caroline, he lets her say whatever she pleases.

Two months after, he sells the villa which cost him twenty-two thousand francs for seven thousand!  But he gains this by the adventure—­he finds out that the country is not the thing that Caroline wants.

The question is becoming serious.  Nature, with its woods, its forests, its valleys, the Switzerland of the environs of Paris, the artificial rivers, have amused Caroline for barely six months.  Adolphe is tempted to abdicate and take Caroline’s part himself.

A HOUSEHOLD REVOLUTION.

One morning, Adolphe is seized by the triumphant idea of letting Caroline find out for herself what she wants.  He gives up to her the control of the house, saying, “Do as you like.”  He substitutes the constitutional system for the autocratic system, a responsible ministry for an absolute conjugal monarchy.  This proof of confidence —­the object of much secret envy—­is, to women, a field-marshal’s baton.  Women are then, so to speak, mistresses at home.