In reply to the sacramental words pronounced by the officer of the
customs, "Have you anything to declare?" your wife says, "I declare a
great deal of ill-humor and dust."

She laughs, the officer laughs, and you feel a desire to tip your
family into the Seine.

Unluckily for you, you suddenly remember the joyous and perverse young
woman who wore a pink bonnet and who made merry in your tilbury six
years before, as you passed this spot on your way to the chop-house on
the river's bank. What a reminiscence! Was Madame Schontz anxious
about babies, about her bonnet, the lace of which was torn to pieces
in the bushes? No, she had no care for anything whatever, not even for
her dignity, for she shocked the rustic police of Vincennes by the
somewhat daring freedom of her style of dancing.

You return home, you have frantically hurried your Norman horse, and
have neither prevented an indisposition of the animal, nor an
indisposition of your wife.

That evening, Caroline has very little milk. If the baby cries and if
your head is split in consequence, it is all your fault, as you
preferred the health of your horse to that of your son who was dying
of hunger, and of your daughter whose supper has disappeared in a
discussion in which your wife was right, _as she always is_.

"Well, well," she says, "men are not mothers!"

As you leave the chamber, you hear your mother-in-law consoling her