sounded the gulf which lies between the lives of a bachelor and a married man?  Listen.  As a bachelor you can say to yourself:  ’I shall never exhibit more than a certain amount of the ridiculous; the public will think of me what I choose it to think.’  Married, you’ll drop into the infinitude of the ridiculous!  Bachelor, you can make your own happiness; you enjoy some to-day, you do without it to-morrow; married, you must take it as it comes; and the day you want it you will have to go without it.  Marry, and you’ll grow a blockhead; you’ll calculate dowries; you’ll talk morality, public and religious; you’ll think young men immoral and dangerous; in short, you’ll become a social academician.  It’s pitiable!  The old bachelor whose property the heirs are waiting for, who fights to his last breath with his nurse for a spoonful of drink, is blest in comparison with a married man.  I’m not speaking of all that will happen to annoy, bore, irritate, coerce, oppose, tyrannize, narcotize, paralyze, and idiotize a man in marriage, in that struggle of two beings always in one another’s presence, bound forever, who have coupled each other under the strange impression that they were suited.  No, to tell you those things would be merely a repetition of Boileau, and we know him by heart.  Still, I’ll forgive your absurd idea if you will promise me to marry “en grand seigneur”; to entail your property; to have two legitimate children, to give your wife a house and household absolutely distinct from yours; to meet her only in society, and never to return from a journey without sending her a courier to announce it.  Two hundred thousand francs a year will suffice for such a life and your antecedents will enable you to marry some rich English woman hungry for a title.  That’s an aristocratic life which seems to me thoroughly French; the only life in which we can retain the respect and friendship of a woman; the only life which distinguishes a man from the present crowd,—­in short, the only life for which a young man should even think of resigning his bachelor blessings.  Thus established, the Comte de Manerville may advise his epoch, place himself above the world, and be nothing less than a minister or an ambassador.  Ridicule can never touch him; he has gained the social advantages of marriage while keeping all the privileges of a bachelor.”

“But, my good friend, I am not de Marsay; I am plainly, as you yourself do me the honor to say, Paul de Manerville, worthy father and husband, deputy of the Centre, possibly peer of France,—­a destiny extremely commonplace; but I am modest and I resign myself.”

“Yes, but your wife,” said the pitiless de Marsay, “will she resign herself?”

“My wife, my dear fellow, will do as I wish.”