Read "Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part I" by Honoré De Balzac online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Very well! In this degree of longitude, not far from a tropical sign upon the name of which good taste forbids us to make a jest at once coarse and unworthy of this thoughtful work, a horrible little annoyance appears, ingeniously called the Matrimonial Gadfly, the most provoking of all gnats, mosquitoes, blood-suckers, fleas and scorpions, for no net was ever yet invented that could keep it off. The gadfly does not immediately sting you; it begins by buzzing in your ears, and _you do not at first know what it is_.
Thus, apropos of nothing, in the most natural way in the world, Caroline says: "Madame Deschars had a lovely dress on, yesterday."