In every household, husbands and wives must one day hear the striking
of a fatal hour. It is a knell, the death and end of jealousy, a great,
noble and charming passion, the only true symptom of love, if it is not
even its double. When a woman is no longer jealous of her husband, all
is over, she loves him no more. So, conjugal love expires in the last
quarrel that a woman gives herself the trouble to raise.
Axiom.—When a woman ceases to quarrel with her husband, the Minotaur
has seated himself in a corner arm-chair, tapping his boots with his
cane.
Every woman must remember her last quarrel, that supreme petty trouble
which often explodes about nothing, but more often still on some
occasion of a brutal fact or of a decisive proof. This cruel farewell
to faith, to the childishness of love, to virtue even, is in a degree
as capricious as life itself. Like life it varies in every house.
Here, the author ought perhaps to search out all the varieties of
quarrels, if he desires to be precise.
Thus, Caroline may have discovered that the judicial robe of the syndic
in Chaumontel’s affair, hides a robe of infinitely softer stuff, of an
agreeable, silky color: that Chaumontel’s hair, in short, is fair, and
that his eyes are blue.
Or else Caroline, who arose before Adolphe, may have seen his greatcoat
thrown wrong side out across a chair; the edge of a little perfumed
paper, just peeping out of the side-pocket, may have attracted her by
its whiteness, like a ray of the sun entering a dark room through a
crack in the window: or else, while taking Adolphe in her arms and
feeling his pocket, she may have caused the note to crackle: or else
she may have been informed of the state of things by a foreign odor
that she has long noticed upon him, and may have read these lines:
“Ungraitfull wun, wot du yu supoz I no About Hipolite. Kum, and yu shal
se whether I Love yu.”
Or this:
“Yesterday, love, you made me wait for you: what will it be to-morrow?”
Or this:
“The women who love you, my dear sir, are very unhappy in hating you
so, when you are not with them: take care, for the hatred which exists
during your absence, may possibly encroach upon the hours you spend in
their company.”
Or this:
“You traitorous Chodoreille, what were you doing yesterday on the
boulevard with a woman hanging on your arm? If it was your wife, accept
my compliments of condolence upon her absent charms: she has doubtless
deposited them at the pawnbroker’s, and the ticket to redeem them with
is lost.”
Four notes emanating from the grisette, the lady, the pretentious woman
in middle life, and the actress, among whom Adolphe has chosen his
_belle_ (according to the Fischtaminellian vocabulary).
Or else Caroline, taken veiled by Ferdinand to Ranelagh Garden, sees
with her own eyes Adolphe abandoning himself furiously to the polka,
holding one of the ladies of honor to Queen Pomare in his arms; or
else, again, Adolphe has for the seventh time, made a mistake in the
name, and called his wife Juliette, Charlotte or Lisa: or, a grocer or
restaurateur sends to the house, during Adolphe’s absence, certain
damning bills which fall into Caroline’s hands.