After this, nothing, not even the memory of the honey-moon, can be compared to Adolphe’s happiness for several days.  A woman, under such circumstances, is all sugar.  She is too sweet:  she would invent the art of petting and cosseting and of coining tender little names, if this matrimonial sugar-plummery had not existed ever since the Terrestrial Paradise.  At the end of the month, Adolphe’s condition is like that of children towards the close of New Year’s week.  So Caroline is beginning to say, not in words, but in acts, in manner, in mimetic expressions:  “It’s difficult to tell what to do to please a man!”

Giving up the helm of the boat to one’s wife, is an exceedingly ordinary idea, and would hardly deserve the qualification of “triumphant,” which we have given it at the commencement of this chapter, if it were not accompanied by that of taking it back again.  Adolphe was seduced by a wish, which invariably seizes persons who are the prey of misfortune, to know how far an evil will go!—­to try how much damage fire will do when left to itself, the individual possessing, or thinking he possesses, the power to arrest it.  This curiosity pursues us from the cradle to the grave.  Then, after his plethora of conjugal felicity, Adolphe, who is treating himself to a farce in his own house, goes through the following phases: 

FIRST EPOCH.  Things go on altogether too well.  Caroline buys little account books to keep a list of her expenses in, she buys a nice little piece of furniture to store her money in, she feeds Adolphe superbly, she is happy in his approbation, she discovers that very many articles are needed in the house.  It is her ambition to be an incomparable housekeeper.  Adolphe, who arrogates to himself the right of censorship, no longer finds the slightest suggestion to make.

When he dresses himself, everything is ready to his hands.  Not even in Armide’s garden was more ingenious tenderness displayed than that of Caroline.  For her phoenix husband, she renews the wax upon his razor strap, she substitutes new suspenders for old ones.  None of his button-holes are ever widowed.  His linen is as well cared for as that of the confessor of the devotee, all whose sins are venial.  His stockings are free from holes.  At table, his tastes, his caprices even, are studied, consulted:  he is getting fat!  There is ink in his inkstand, and the sponge is always moist.  He never has occasion to say, like Louis XIV, “I came near having to wait!” In short, he hears himself continually called a love of a man.  He is obliged to reproach Caroline for neglecting herself:  she does not pay sufficient attention to her own needs.  Of this gentle reproach Caroline takes note.

SECOND EPOCH.  The scene changes, at table.  Everything is exceedingly dear.  Vegetables are beyond one’s means.  Wood sells as if it came from Campeche.  Fruit?  Oh! as to fruit, princes, bankers and great lords alone can eat it.  Dessert is a cause of ruin.  Adolphe often hears Caroline say to Madame Deschars:  “How do you manage?” Conferences are held in your presence upon the proper way to keep cooks under the thumb.