the rest are cobblestones which hold the social organ in its place, water-worn and rounded by the tide, but never worn-out.  Your wife has maintained that life with ease; she looks made for it; she is always fresh and beautiful.  To my mind the deduction is plain, —­she has never loved you; and you have loved her like a madman.

To strike out love from that siliceous nature a man of iron was needed.  After standing, but without enduring, the shock of Lady Dudley, Felix was the fitting mate to Natalie.  There is no great merit in divining that to you she was indifferent.  In love with her yourself, you have been incapable of perceiving the cold nature of a young woman whom you have fashioned and trained for a man like Vandenesse.  The coldness of your wife, if you perceived it, you set down, with the stupid jurisprudence of married people, to the honor of her reserve and her innocence.  Like all husbands, you thought you could keep her virtuous in a society where women whisper from ear to ear that which men are afraid to say.

No, your wife has liked the social benefits she derived from marriage, but the private burdens of it she found rather heavy.  Those burdens, that tax was—­you!  Seeing nothing of all this, you have gone on digging your abysses (to use the hackneyed words of rhetoric) and covering them with flowers.  You have mildly obeyed the law which rules the ruck of men; from which I desired to protect you.  Dear fellow! only one thing was wanting to make you as dull as the bourgeois deceived by his wife, who is all astonishment or wrath, and that is that you should talk to me of your sacrifices, your love for Natalie, and chant that psalm:  “Ungrateful would she be if she betrayed me; I have done this, I have done that, and more will I do; I will go to the ends of the earth, to the Indies for her sake.  I—­I—­” etc.  My dear Paul, have you never lived in Paris, have you never had the honor of belonging by ties of friendship to Henri de Marsay, that you should be so ignorant of the commonest things, the primitive principles that move the feminine mechanism, the a-b-c of their hearts?  Then hear me:—­

Suppose you exterminate yourself, suppose you go to Saint-Pelagie for a woman’s debts, suppose you kill a score of men, desert a dozen women, serve like Laban, cross the deserts, skirt the galleys, cover yourself with glory, cover yourself with shame, refuse, like Nelson, to fight a battle until you have kissed the shoulder of Lady Hamilton, dash yourself, like Bonaparte, upon the bridge at Arcola, go mad like Roland, risk your life to dance five minutes with a woman—­my dear fellow, what have all those things to do with love?  If love were won by samples such as those mankind would be too happy.  A spurt of prowess at the moment of desire would give a man the woman that he wanted.  But love, love, my good Paul, is a faith like that in the Immaculate conception of