Upon the conjugal pillow, the second act ends by a number of onomatopes, all of them favorable to peace. Adolphe, precisely like children in the presence of a slice of bread and molasses, promises everything that Caroline wants. THIRD ACT. As the curtain rises, the stage represents a chamber in a state of extreme disorder. Adolphe, in his dressing gown, tries to go out furtively and without waking Caroline, who is sleeping profoundly, and finally does go out. Caroline, exceedingly happy, gets up, consults her mirror, and makes inquiries about breakfast. An hour afterward, when she is ready she learns that breakfast is served. "Tell monsieur." "Madame, he is in the little parlor." "What a nice man he is," she says, going up to Adolphe, and talking the babyish, caressing language of the honey-moon. "What for, pray?" "Why, to let his little Liline ride the horsey." OBSERVATION. During the honey-moon, some few married couples,--very young ones,--make use of languages, which, in ancient days, Aristotle classified and defined. (See his Pedagogy.) Thus they are perpetually using such terminations as _lala_, _nana_, _coachy-poachy_, just as mothers and nurses use them to babies. This is one of the secret reasons, discussed and recognized in big quartos by the Germans, which determined the Cabires, the creators of the Greek mythology, to represent Love as a child. There are other reasons very well known to women, the principal of which is, that, in their opinion, love in men is always _small_. "Where did you get that idea, my sweet? You must have dreamed it!" "What!" Caroline stands stark still: she opens wide her eyes which are already considerably widened by amazement. Being inwardly epileptic, she says not a word: she merely gazes at Adolphe. Under the satanic fires of their gaze, Adolphe turns half way round toward the dining-room; but he asks himself whether it would not be well to let Caroline take one lesson, and to tip the wink to the riding-master, to disgust her with equestrianism by the harshness of his style of instruction. There is nothing so terrible as an actress who reckons upon a success, and who _fait four_. In the language of the stage, to _faire four_ is to play to a wretchedly thin house, or to obtain not the slightest applause. It is taking great pains for nothing, in short a _signal failure_. This petty trouble--it is very petty--is reproduced in a thousand ways in married life, when the honey-moon is over, and when the wife has no personal fortune. In spite of the author's repugnance to inserting anecdotes in an exclusively aphoristic work, the tissue of which will bear nothing but the most delicate and subtle observations,--from the nature of the subject at least,--it seems to him necessary to illustrate this page by an incident narrated by one of our first physicians. This repetition of the subject involves a rule of conduct very much in use with the doctors of Paris.