polished shafts of a tilbury as light as your own heart, and moving
his glistening croup under the quadruple network of the reins and
ribbons that you so skillfully manage with what grace and elegance the
Champs Elysees can bear witness--you drive a good solid Norman horse
with a steady, family gait.

You have learned what paternal patience is, and you let no opportunity
slip of proving it. Your countenance, therefore, is serious.

By your side is a domestic, evidently for two purposes like the
carriage. The vehicle is four-wheeled and hung upon English springs:
it is corpulent and resembles a Rouen scow: it has glass windows, and
an infinity of economical arrangements. It is a barouche in fine
weather, and a brougham when it rains. It is apparently light, but,
when six persons are in it, it is heavy and tires out your only horse.

On the back seat, spread out like flowers, is your young wife in full
bloom, with her mother, a big marshmallow with a great many leaves.
These two flowers of the female species twitteringly talk of you,
though the noise of the wheels and your attention to the horse, joined
to your fatherly caution, prevent you from hearing what they say.

On the front seat, there is a nice tidy nurse holding a little girl in
her lap: by her side is a boy in a red plaited shirt, who is
continually leaning out of the carriage and climbing upon the
cushions, and who has a thousand times drawn down upon himself those
declarations of every mother, which he knows to be threats and nothing
else: "Be a good boy, Adolphe, or else--" "I declare I'll never bring
you again, so there!"