“Oh,” says Caroline, interrupting herself and looking at me, “you men teach us to live like spiders in the depths of their webs, to see everything without seeming to look at it, to investigate the meaning and spirit of words, movements, looks.  You say, ’How cunning women are!’ But you should say, ‘How deceitful men are!’

“I can’t tell you how much care, how many days, how many manoeuvres, it cost me to become Madame de Fischtaminel’s duplicate!  But these are our battles, child,” she adds, returning to Josephine.  “I could not find a certain little embroidered neckerchief, a very marvel!  I finally learned that it was made to order.  I unearthed the embroideress, and ordered a kerchief like Madame de Fischtaminel’s.  The price was a mere trifle, one hundred and fifty francs!  It had been ordered by a gentleman who had made a present of it to Madame de Fischtaminel.  All my savings were absorbed by it.  Now we women of Paris are all of us very much restricted in the article of dress.  There is not a man worth a hundred thousand francs a year, that loses ten thousand a winter at whist, who does not consider his wife extravagant, and is not alarmed at her bills for what he calls ‘rags’!  ‘Let my savings go,’ I said.  And they went.  I had the modest pride of a woman in love:  I would not speak a word to Adolphe of my dress; I wanted it to be a surprise, goose that I was!  Oh, how brutally you men take away our blessed ignorance!”

This remark is meant for me, for me who had taken nothing from the lady, neither tooth, nor anything whatever of the things with a name and without a name that may be taken from a woman.

“I must tell you that my husband took me to Madame de Fischtaminel’s, where I dined quite often.  I heard her say to him, ’Why, your wife looks very well!’ She had a patronizing way with me that I put up with:  Adolphe wished that I could have her wit and preponderance in society.  In short, this phoenix of women was my model.  I studied and copied her, I took immense pains not to be myself—­oh!—­it was a poem that no one but us women can understand!  Finally, the day of my triumph dawned.  My heart beat for joy, as if I were a child, as if I were what we all are at twenty-two.  My husband was going to call for me for a walk in the Tuileries:  he came in, I looked at him radiant with joy, but he took no notice.  Well, I can confess it now, it was one of those frightful disasters—­but I will say nothing about it —­this gentleman here would make fun of me.”

I protest by another movement.

“It was,” she goes on, for a woman never stops till she has told the whole of a thing, “as if I had seen an edifice built by a fairy crumble into ruins.  Adolphe manifested not the slightest surprise.  We got into the carriage.  Adolphe noticed my sadness, and asked me what the matter was:  I replied as we always do when our hearts are wrung by these petty vexations, ‘Oh, nothing!’ Then he took his eye-glass, and stared at the promenaders