another kindly, but obstinate; this one loves his wife, yet his will is arbitrary and uncertain; that other, preoccupied by ambition, pays off his affections as he would a debt, bestows the luxuries of wealth but deprives the daily life of happiness,—­in short, the average man of social life is essentially incomplete, without being signally to blame.  Men of talent are as variable as barometers; genius alone is intrinsically good.

For this reason unalloyed happiness is found at the two extremes of the moral scale.  The good-natured fool and the man of genius alone are capable—­the one through weakness, the other by strength—­of that equanimity of temper, that unvarying gentleness, which soften the asperities of daily life.  In the one, it is indifference or stolidity; in the other, indulgence and a portion of the divine thought of which he is the interpreter, and which needs to be consistent alike in principle and application.  Both natures are equally simple; but in one there is vacancy, in the other depth.  This is why clever women are disposed to take dull men as the small change for great ones.

Balthazar Claes carried his greatness into the lesser things of life.  He delighted in considering conjugal love as a magnificent work; and like all men of lofty aims who can bear nothing imperfect, he wished to develop all its beauties.  His powers of mind enlivened the calm of happiness, his noble nature marked his attentions with the charm of grace.  Though he shared the philosophical tenets of the eighteenth century, he installed a chaplain in his home until 1801 (in spite of the risk he ran from the revolutionary decrees), so that he might not thwart the Spanish fanaticism which his wife had sucked in with her mother’s milk:  later, when public worship was restored in France, he accompanied her to mass every Sunday.  His passion never ceased to be that of a lover.  The protecting power, which women like so much, was never exercised by this husband, lest to that wife it might seem pity.  He treated her with exquisite flattery as an equal, and sometimes mutinied against her, as men will, as though to brave the supremacy of a pretty woman.  His lips wore a smile of happiness, his speech was ever tender; he loved his Josephine for herself and for himself, with an ardor that crowned with perpetual praise the qualities and the loveliness of a wife.

Fidelity, often the result of social principle, religious duty, or self-interest on the part of a husband, was in this case involuntary, and not without the sweet flatteries of the spring-time of love.  Duty was the only marriage obligation unknown to these lovers, whose love was equal; for Balthazar Claes found the complete and lasting realization of his hopes in Mademoiselle de Temninck; his heart was satisfied but not wearied, the man within him was ever happy.