life; it is perhaps the most serious.

Induced by a desire the thousandth time expressed by Caroline, who
complained that she had to go on foot or that she could not buy a new
hat, a new parasol, a new dress, or any other article of dress, often
enough:

That she could not dress her baby as a sailor, as a lancer, as an
artilleryman of the National Guard, as a Highlander with naked legs
and a cap and feather, in a jacket, in a roundabout, in a velvet sack,
in boots, in trousers: that she could not buy him toys enough, nor
mechanical moving mice and Noah's Arks enough:

That she could not return Madame Deschars or Madame de Fischtaminel
their civilities, a ball, a party, a dinner: nor take a private box at
the theatre, thus avoiding the necessity of sitting cheek by jowl with
men who are either too polite or not enough so, and of calling a cab
at the close of the performance; apropos of which she thus discourses:

"You think it cheaper, but you are mistaken: men are all the same! I
soil my shoes, I spoil my hat, my shawl gets wet and my silk stockings
get muddy. You economize twenty francs by not having a carriage,--no
not twenty, sixteen, for your pay four for the cab--and you lose fifty
francs' worth of dress, besides being wounded in your pride on seeing
a faded bonnet on my head: you don't see why it's faded, but it's
those horrid cabs. I say nothing of the annoyance of being tumbled and
jostled by a crowd of men, for it seems you don't care for that!"

That she could not buy a piano instead of hiring one, nor keep up with
the fashions; (there are some women, she says, who have all the new