“You leave me thus! Take care! Your husband may yet find himself seated at the bar of the Court of Assizes: he is accessory to a fraudulent bankruptcy, and we know several things about him that are not by any means honorable. It is not his first departure from rectitude; he has done a good many dirty things, he has been mixed up in disgraceful intrigues, and you are singularly careful of the honor of a man who cares as little for his own honor as he does for yours.” Caroline, alarmed by these words, lets go the door, shuts it and comes back. “What do you mean, sir?” she exclaims, furious at this outrageous broadside. “Why, this affair--” “Chaumontel’s affair?” “No, his speculations in houses that he had built by people that were insolvent.” Caroline remembers the enterprise undertaken by Adolphe to double his income: (See _The Jesuitism of Women_) she trembles. Her curiosity is in the syndic’s favor. “Sit down here. There, at this distance, I will behave well, but I can look at you.” And he narrates, at length, the conception due to du Tillet the banker, interrupting himself to say: “Oh, what a pretty, cunning, little foot; no one but you could have such a foot as that--_Du Tillet, therefore, compromised._ What an ear, too! You have been doubtless told that you had a delicious ear--_And du Tillet was right, for judgment had already been given_--I love small ears, but let me have a model of yours, and I will do anything you like--_du Tillet profited by this to throw the whole loss on your idiotic husband_: oh, what a charming silk, you are divinely dressed!” “Where were we, sir?” “How can I remember while admiring your Raphaelistic head?” At the twenty-seventh compliment, Caroline considers the syndic a man of wit: she makes him a polite speech, and goes away without learning much more of the enterprise which, not long before had swallowed up three hundred thousand francs. There are many huge variations of this petty trouble. EXAMPLE. Adolphe is brave and susceptible: he is walking on the Champs Elysees, where there is a crowd of people; in this crowd are several ill-mannered young men who indulge in jokes of doubtful propriety: Caroline puts up with them and pretends not to hear them, in order to keep her husband out of a duel. ANOTHER EXAMPLE. A child belonging to the genus Terrible, exclaims in the presence of everybody: “Mamma, would you let Justine hit me?” “Certainly not.” “Why do you ask, my little man?” inquires Madame Foullepointe. “Because she just gave father a big slap, and he’s ever so much stronger than me.” Madame Foullepointe laughs, and Adolphe, who intended to pay court to her, is cruelly joked by her, after having had a first last quarrel with Caroline. THE LAST QUARREL.