Generally speaking, a young woman does not exhibit her true character till she has been married two or three years.  She hides her faults, without intending it, in the midst of her first joys, of her first parties of pleasure.  She goes into society to dance, she visits her relatives to show you off, she journeys on with an escort of love’s first wiles; she is gradually transformed from girlhood to womanhood.  Then she becomes mother and nurse, and in this situation, full of charming pangs, that leaves neither a word nor a moment for observation, such are its multiplied cares, it is impossible to judge of a woman.  You require, then, three or four years of intimate life before you discover an exceedingly melancholy fact, one that gives you cause for constant terror.

Your wife, the young lady in whom the first pleasures of life and love supplied the place of grace and wit, so arch, so animated, so vivacious, whose least movements spoke with delicious eloquence, has cast off, slowly, one by one, her natural artifices.  At last you perceive the truth!  You try to disbelieve it, you think yourself deceived; but no:  Caroline lacks intellect, she is dull, she can neither joke nor reason, sometimes she has little tact.  You are frightened.  You find yourself forever obliged to lead this darling through the thorny paths, where you must perforce leave your self-esteem in tatters.

You have already been annoyed several times by replies that, in society, were politely received:  people have held their tongues instead of smiling; but you were certain that after your departure the women looked at each other and said:  “Did you hear Madame Adolphe?”

“Your little woman, she is ­”

“A regular cabbage-head.”

“How could he, who is certainly a man of sense, choose ?”

“He should educate, teach his wife, or make her hold her tongue.”