Does a husband, irritated beyond all measure, at last express his
wishes to them? They regard him with an air of submission, bow their
heads and keep silence. This pantomime almost always puts a husband to
rout. In conjugal struggles of this kind, a man prefers a woman should
speak and defend herself, for then he may show elation or annoyance;
but as for these women, not a word. Their silence distresses you and
you experience a sort of remorse, like the murderer who, when he finds
his victim offers no resistance, trembles with redoubled fear. He
would prefer to slay him in self-defence. You return to the subject.
As you draw near, your wife wipes away her tears and hides her
handkerchief, so as to let you see that she has been weeping. You are
melted, you implore your little Caroline to speak, your sensibility
has been touched and you forget everything; then she sobs while she
speaks, and speaks while she sobs. This is a sort of machine
eloquence; she deafens you with her tears, with her words which come
jerked out in confusion; it is the clapper and torrent of a mill.

French women and especially Parisians possess in a marvelous degree
the secret by which such scenes are enacted, and to these scenes their
voices, their sex, their toilet, their manner give a wonderful charm.
How often do the tears upon the cheeks of these adorable actresses
give way to a piquant smile, when they see their husbands hasten to
break the silk lace, the weak fastening of their corsets, or to
restore the comb which holds together the tresses of their hair and
the bunch of golden ringlets always on the point of falling down?

But how all these tricks of modernity pale before the genius of
antiquity, before nervous attacks which are violent, before the
Pyrrhic dance of married life! Oh! how many hopes for a lover are
there in the vivacity of those convulsive movements, in the fire of