Caroline has taken care of everything. Love is the first house servant in the world, so the table is set with positively diabolic coquetry. There is the white damask cloth, the little blue service, the silver gilt urn, the chiseled milk pitcher, and flowers all round! If it is winter, she has got some grapes, and has rummaged the cellar for the very best old wine. The rolls are from the most famous baker’s. The succulent dishes, the _pate de foie gras_, the whole of this elegant entertainment, would have made the author of the Glutton’s Almanac neigh with impatience: it would make a note-shaver smile, and tell a professor of the old University what the matter in hand is. Everything is prepared. Caroline has been ready since the night before: she contemplates her work. Justine sighs and arranges the furniture. Caroline picks off the yellow leaves of the plants in the windows. A woman, in these cases, disguises what we may call the prancings of the heart, by those meaningless occupations in which the fingers have all the grip of pincers, when the pink nails burn, and when this unspoken exclamation rasps the throat: “He hasn’t come yet!” What a blow is this announcement by Justine: “Madame, here’s a letter!” A letter in place of Ferdinand! How does she ever open it? What ages of life slip by as she unfolds it! Women know this by experience! As to men, when they are in such maddening passes, they murder their shirt-frills. “Justine, Monsieur Ferdinand is ill!” exclaims Caroline. “Send for a carriage.” As Justine goes down stairs, Adolphe comes up. “My poor mistress!” observes Justine. “I guess she won’t want the carriage now.” “Oh my! Where have you come from?” cries Caroline, on seeing Adolphe standing in ecstasy before her voluptuous breakfast. Adolphe, whose wife long since gave up treating _him_ to such charming banquets, does not answer. But he guesses what it all means, as he sees the cloth inscribed with the delightful ideas which Madame de Fischtaminel or the syndic of Chaumontel’s affair have often inscribed for him upon tables quite as elegant. “Whom are you expecting?” he asks in his turn. “Who could it be, except Ferdinand?” replies Caroline. “And is he keeping you waiting?” “He is sick, poor fellow.” A quizzical idea enters Adolphe’s head, and he replies, winking with one eye only: “I have just seen him.” “Where?” “In front of the Cafe de Paris, with some friends.” “But why have you come back?” says Caroline, trying to conceal her murderous fury. “Madame Foullepointe, who was tired of Charles, you said, has been with him at Ville d’Avray since yesterday.” Adolphe sits down, saying: “This has happened very appropriately, for I’m as hungry as two bears.” Caroline sits down, too, and looks at Adolphe stealthily: she weeps internally: but she very soon asks, in a tone of voice that she manages to render indifferent, “Who was Ferdinand with?”