“Ah, my dear, you shall know all about it, though it is a cruel thing to say—­but we live as much by vanity as by love.  To live by love alone, one must dwell somewhere else than in Paris.  What difference would it make to us whether we had only one white percale gown, if the man we love did not see other women dressed differently, more elegantly than we—­women who inspire ideas by their ways, by a multitude of little things which really go to make up great passions?  Vanity, my dear, is cousin-german to jealousy, to that beautiful and noble jealousy which consists in not allowing one’s empire to be invaded, in reigning undisturbed in a soul, and passing one’s life happily in a heart.

“Ah, well, my woman’s vanity is on the rack.  Though some troubles may seem petty indeed, I have learned, unfortunately, that in the home there are no petty troubles.  For everything there is magnified by incessant contact with sensations, with desires, with ideas.  Such then is the secret of that sadness which you have surprised in me and which I did not care to explain.  It is one of those things in which words go too far, and where writing holds at least the thought within bounds by establishing it.  The effects of a moral perspective differ so radically between what is said and what is written!  All is so solemn, so serious on paper!  One cannot commit any more imprudences.  Is it not this fact which makes a treasure out of a letter where one gives one’s self over to one’s thoughts?

“You doubtless thought me wretched, but I am only wounded.  You discovered me sitting alone by the fire, and no Adolphe.  I had just finished putting the children to bed; they were asleep.  Adolphe for the tenth time had been invited out to a house where I do not go, where they want Adolphe without his wife.  There are drawing-rooms where he goes without me, just at there are many pleasures in which he alone is the guest.  If he were M. de Navarreins and I a d’Espard, society would never think of separating us; it would want us always together.  His habits are formed; he does not suspect the humiliation which weighs upon my heart.  Indeed, if he had the slightest inkling of this small sorrow which I am ashamed to own, he would drop society, he would become more of a prig than the people who come between us.  But he would hamper his progress, he would make enemies, he would raise up obstacles by imposing me upon the salons where I would be subject to a thousand slights.  That is why I prefer my sufferings to what would happen were they discovered.

“Adolphe will succeed!  He carries my revenge in his beautiful head, does this man of genius.  One day the world shall pay for all these slights.  But when?  Perhaps I shall be forty-five.  My beautiful youth will have passed in my chimney-corner, and with this thought:  Adolphe smiles, he is enjoying the society of fair women, he is playing the devoted to them, while none of these attentions come my way.