“I have brought Adolphe luck; for since our marriage, he has obtained the control of a feuilleton which is worth four hundred francs a month to him, though it takes but a small portion of his time.  He owes this situation to an investment.  We employed the seventy thousand francs left me by my Aunt Carabas in giving security for a newspaper; on this we get nine per cent, and we have stock besides.  Since this transaction, which was concluded some ten months ago, our income has doubled, and we now possess a competence, I can complain of my marriage in a pecuniary point of view no more than as regards my affections.  My vanity alone has suffered, and my ambition has been swamped.  You will understand the various petty troubles which have assailed me, by a single specimen.

“Adolphe, you remember, appeared to us on intimate terms with the famous Baroness Schinner, so renowned for her wit, her influence, her wealth and her connection with celebrated men.  I supposed that he was welcomed at her house as a friend:  my husband presented me, and I was coldly received.  I saw that her rooms were furnished with extravagant luxury; and instead of Madame Schinner’s returning my call, I received a card, twenty days afterward, and at an insolently improper hour.

“On arriving at Paris, I went to walk upon the boulevard, proud of my anonymous great man.  He nudged me with his elbow, and said, pointing out a fat little ill-dressed man, ‘There’s so and so!’ He mentioned one of the seven or eight illustrious men in France.  I got ready my look of admiration, and I saw Adolphe rapturously doffing his hat to the truly great man, who replied by the curt little nod that you vouchsafe a person with whom you have doubtless exchanged hardly four words in ten years.  Adolphe had begged a look for my sake.  ’Doesn’t he know you?’ I said to my husband.  ’Oh, yes, but he probably took me for somebody else,’ replied he.

“And so of poets, so of celebrated musicians, so of statesmen.  But, as a compensation, we stop and talk for ten minutes in front of some arcade or other, with Messieurs Armand du Cantal, George Beaunoir, Felix Verdoret, of whom you have never heard.  Mesdames Constantine Ramachard, Anais Crottat, and Lucienne Vouillon threaten me with their blue friendship.  We dine editors totally unknown in our province.  Finally I have had the painful happiness of seeing Adolphe decline an invitation to an evening party to which I was not bidden.

“Oh!  Claire dear, talent is still the rare flower of spontaneous growth, that no greenhouse culture can produce.  I do not deceive myself:  Adolphe is an ordinary man, known, estimated as such:  he has no other chance, as he himself says, than to take his place among the utilities of literature.  He was not without wit at Viviers:  but to be a man of wit at Paris, you must possess every kind of wit in formidable doses.

“I esteem Adolphe:  for, after some few fibs, he frankly confessed his position, and, without humiliating himself too deeply, he promised that I should be happy.  He hopes, like numerous other ordinary men, to obtain some place, that of an assistant librarian, for instance, or the pecuniary management of a newspaper.  Who knows but we may get him elected deputy for Viviers, in the course of time?