Certain women with lips tight shut like a vise, with a muddy complexion and thin arms, treat themselves to the malicious pleasure of promenading their Adolphe through the quagmire of falsehood and contradiction: they question him (see _Troubles within Troubles_), like a magistrate examining a criminal, reserving the spiteful enjoyment of crushing his denials by positive proof at a decisive moment. Generally, in this supreme scene of conjugal life, the fair sex is the executioner, while, in the contrary case, man is the assassin. This is the way of it: This last quarrel (you shall know why the author has called it the _last_), is always terminated by a solemn, sacred promise, made by scrupulous, noble, or simply intelligent women (that is to say, by all women), and which we give here in its grandest form. “Enough, Adolphe! We love each other no more; you have deceived me, and I shall never forget it. I may forgive it, but I can never forget it.” Women represent themselves as implacable only to render their forgiveness charming: they have anticipated God. “We have now to live in common like two friends,” continues Caroline. “Well, let us live like two comrades, two brothers, I do not wish to make your life intolerable, and I never again will speak to you of what has happened--” Adolphe gives Caroline his hand: she takes it, and shakes it in the English style. Adolphe thanks Caroline, and catches a glimpse of bliss: he has converted his wife into a sister, and hopes to be a bachelor again. The next day Caroline indulges in a very witty allusion (Adolphe cannot help laughing at it) to Chaumontel’s affair. In society she makes general remarks which, to Adolphe, are very particular remarks, about their last quarrel. At the end of a fortnight a day never passes without Caroline’s recalling their last quarrel by saying: “It was the day when I found Chaumontel’s bill in your pocket:” or “it happened since our last quarrel:” or, “it was the day when, for the first time, I had a clear idea of life,” etc. She assassinates Adolphe, she martyrizes him! In society she gives utterance to terrible things. “We are happy, my dear [to a lady], when we love each other no longer: it’s then that we learn how to make ourselves beloved,” and she looks at Ferdinand. In short, the last quarrel never comes to an end, and from this fact flows the following axiom: Axiom.--Putting yourself in the wrong with your lawful wife, is solving the problem of Perpetual Motion. A SIGNAL FAILURE. Women, and especially married women, stick ideas into their brain-pan precisely as they stick pins into a pincushion, and the devil himself,--do you mind?--could not get them out: they reserve to themselves the exclusive right of sticking them in, pulling them out, and sticking them in again. Caroline is riding home one evening from Madame Foullepointe’s in a violent state of jealousy and ambition.