MEMORIES AND REGRETS.

After several years of wedded life, your love has become so placid, that Caroline sometimes tries, in the evening, to wake you up by various little coquettish phrases.  There is about you a certain calmness and tranquillity which always exasperates a lawful wife.  Women see in it a sort of insolence:  they look upon the indifference of happiness as the fatuity of confidence, for of course they never imagine their inestimable equalities can be regarded with disdain:  their virtue is therefore enraged at being so cordially trusted in.

In this situation, which is what every couple must come to, and which both husband and wife must expect, no husband dares confess that the constant repetition of the same dish has become wearisome; but his appetite certainly requires the condiments of dress, the ideas excited by absence, the stimulus of an imaginary rivalry.

In short, at this period, you walk very comfortably with your wife on your arm, without pressing hers against your heart with the solicitous and watchful cohesion of a miser grasping his treasure.  You gaze carelessly round upon the curiosities in the street, leading your wife in a loose and distracted way, as if you were towing a Norman scow.  Come now, be frank!  If, on passing your wife, an admirer were gently to press her, accidentally or purposely, would you have the slightest desire to discover his motives?  Besides, you say, no woman would seek to bring about a quarrel for such a trifle.  Confess this, too, that the expression “such a trifle” is exceedingly flattering to both of you.

You are in this position, but you have as yet proceeded no farther.  Still, you have a horrible thought which you bury in the depths of your heart and conscience:  Caroline has not come up to your expectations.  Caroline has imperfections, which, during the high tides of the honey-moon, were concealed under the water, but which the ebb of the gall-moon has laid bare.  You have several times run against these breakers, your hopes have been often shipwrecked upon them, more than once your desires—­those of a young marrying man—­(where, alas, is that time!) have seen their richly laden gondolas go to pieces there:  the flower of the cargo went to the bottom, the ballast of the marriage remained.  In short, to make use of a colloquial expression, as you talk over your marriage with yourself you say, as you look at Caroline, “She is not what I took her to be!”

Some evening, at a ball, in society, at a friend’s house, no matter where, you meet a sublime young woman, beautiful, intellectual and kind:  with a soul, oh! a soul of celestial purity, and of miraculous beauty!  Yes, there is that unchangeable oval cut of face, those features which time will never impair, that graceful and thoughtful brow.  The unknown is rich, well-educated, of noble birth:  she will always be what she should be, she knows when to shine, when to remain in the background:  she appears in all her glory and power, the being you have dreamed of, your wife that should have been, she whom you feel you could love forever.  She would always have flattered your little vanities, she would understand and admirably serve your interests.  She is tender and gay, too, this young lady who reawakens all your better feelings, who rekindles your slumbering desires.