Then he married.  He married, quite suddenly, a little girl from the provinces, who had come to Paris in search of a husband.  How in the world could that little thin, insipidly fair girl, with her weak hands, her light, vacant eyes, and her clear, silly voice, who was exactly like a hundred thousand marriageable dolls, have picked up that intelligent, clever young fellow?  Can any one understand these things?  No doubt he had hoped for happiness, simple, quiet and long-enduring happiness, in the arms of a good, tender and faithful woman; he had seen all that in the transparent looks of that schoolgirl with light hair.

He had not dreamed of the fact that an active, living and vibrating man grows weary of everything as soon as he understands the stupid reality, unless, indeed, he becomes so brutalized that he understands nothing whatever.

What would he be like when I met him again?  Still lively, witty, light-hearted and enthusiastic, or in a state of mental torpor induced by provincial life?  A man may change greatly in the course of fifteen years!

The train stopped at a small station, and as I got out of the carriage, a stout, a very stout man with red cheeks and a big stomach rushed up to me with open arms, exclaiming:  “George!” I embraced him, but I had not recognized him, and then I said, in astonishment:  “By Jove!  You have not grown thin!” And he replied with a laugh: 

“What did you expect?  Good living, a good table and good nights!  Eating and sleeping, that is my existence!”

I looked at him closely, trying to discover in that broad face the features I held so dear.  His eyes alone had not changed, but I no longer saw the same expression in them, and I said to myself:  “If the expression be the reflection of the mind, the thoughts in that head are not what they used to be formerly; those thoughts which I knew so well.”

Yet his eyes were bright, full of happiness and friendship, but they had not that clear, intelligent expression which shows as much as words the brightness of the intellect.  Suddenly he said: 

“Here are my two eldest children.”  A girl of fourteen, who was almost a woman, and a boy of thirteen, in the dress of a boy from a Lycee, came forward in a hesitating and awkward manner, and I said in a low voice:  “Are they yours?” “Of course they are,” he replied, laughing.  “How many have you?” “Five!  There are three more at home.”

He said this in a proud, self-satisfied, almost triumphant manner, and I felt profound pity, mingled with a feeling of vague contempt, for this vainglorious and simple reproducer of his species.

I got into a carriage which he drove himself, and we set off through the town, a dull, sleepy, gloomy town where nothing was moving in the streets except a few dogs and two or three maidservants.  Here and there a shopkeeper, standing at his door, took off his hat, and Simon returned his salute and told me the man’s name; no doubt to show me that he knew all the inhabitants personally, and the thought struck me that he was thinking of becoming a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies, that dream of all those who bury themselves in the provinces.