“Monsieur de Fischtaminel, who went away in 1809, with the rank of sub-lieutenant, at the age of eighteen, has had no other education than that due to discipline, to the natural sense of honor of a noble and a soldier: but though he possesses tact, the sentiment of probity, and a proper subordination, his ignorance is gross, he knows absolutely nothing, and he has a horror of learning anything. Oh, dear mother, what an accomplished door-keeper this colonel would have made, had he been born in indigence! I don’t think a bit the better of him for his bravery, for he did not fight against the Russians, the Austrians, or the Prussians: he fought against ennui. When he rushed upon the enemy, Captain Fischtaminel’s purpose was to get away from himself. He married because he had nothing else to do. “We have another slight difficulty to content with: my husband harasses the servants to such a degree that we change them every six months. “I so ardently desire, dear mother, to remain a virtuous woman, that I am going to try the effect of traveling for half the year. During the winter, I shall go every evening to the Italian or the French opera, or to parties: but I don’t know whether our fortune will permit such an expenditure. Uncle Cyrus ought to come to Paris--I would take care of him as I would of an inheritance. “If you discover a cure for my woes, let your daughter know of it--your daughter who loves you as much as she deplores her misfortunes, and who would have been glad to call herself by some other name than that of “NINA FISCHTAMINEL.” Besides the necessity of describing this petty trouble, which could only be described by the pen of a woman,--and what a woman she was!--it was necessary to make you acquainted with a character whom you saw only in profile in the first half of this book, the queen of the particular set in which Caroline lived,--a woman both envied and adroit, who succeeded in conciliating, at an early date, what she owed to the world with the requirements of the heart. This letter is her absolution. INDISCRETIONS. Women are either chaste--or vain--or simply proud. They are therefore all subject to the following petty trouble: Certain husbands are so delighted to have, in the form of a wife, a woman to themselves,--a possession exclusively due to the legal ceremony,--that they dread the public’s making a mistake, and they hasten to brand their consort, as lumber-dealers brand their logs while floating down stream, or as the Berry stock-raisers brand their sheep. They bestow names of endearment, right before people, upon their wives: names taken, after the Roman fashion (columbella), from the animal kingdom, as: my chick, my duck, my dove, my lamb; or, choosing from the vegetable kingdom, they call them: my cabbage, my fig (this only in Provence), my plum (this only in Alsatia). Never:--My flower! Pray note this discretion.