If, in all the circumstances of life a man does not turn over and over both things and ideas in order to examine them thoroughly under their different aspects before taking action, that man is weak and incomplete and in danger of fatal failure.  At this moment Paul was an optimist; he saw everything to advantage, and did not tell himself than an ambitious mother-in-law might prove a tyrant.  So, every evening as he left the house, he fancied himself a married man, allured his mind with its own thought, and slipped on the slippers of wedlock cheerfully.  In the first place, he had enjoyed his freedom too long to regret the loss of it; he was tired of a bachelor’s life, which offered him nothing new; he now saw only its annoyances; whereas if he thought at times of the difficulties of marriage, its pleasures, in which lay novelty, came far more prominently before his mind.

“Marriage,” he said to himself, “is disagreeable for people without means, but half its troubles disappear before wealth.”

Every day some favorable consideration swelled the advantages which he now saw in this particular alliance.

“No matter to what position I attain, Natalie will always be on the level of her part,” thought he, “and that is no small merit in a woman.  How many of the Empire men I’ve seen who suffered horribly through their wives!  It is a great condition of happiness not to feel one’s pride or one’s vanity wounded by the companion we have chosen.  A man can never be really unhappy with a well-bred wife; she will never make him ridiculous; such a woman is certain to be useful to him.  Natalie will receive in her own house admirably.”

So thinking, he taxed his memory as to the most distinguished women of the faubourg Saint-Germain, in order to convince himself that Natalie could, if not eclipse them, at any rate stand among them on a footing of perfect equality.  All comparisons were to her advantage, for they rested on his own imagination, which followed his desires.  Paris would have shown him daily other natures, young girls of other styles of beauty and charm, and the multiplicity of impressions would have balanced his mind; whereas in Bordeaux Natalie had no rivals, she was the solitary flower; moreover, she appeared to him at a moment when Paul was under the tyranny of an idea to which most men succumb at his age.

Thus these reasons of propinquity, joined to reasons of self-love and a real passion which had no means of satisfaction except by marriage, led Paul on to an irrational love, which he had, however, the good sense to keep to himself.  He even endeavored to study Mademoiselle Evangelista as a man should who desires not to compromise his future life; for the words of his friend de Marsay did sometimes rumble in his ears like a warning.  But, in the first place, persons accustomed to luxury have a certain indifference to it which misleads them.  They despise it, they use it; it is an instrument, and not