She had not really selected her husband.  She did not know:  she had permitted herself to be married by her father, who, then a widower, embarrassed by the care of a girl, had wished to do things quickly and well.  He considered the exterior advantages, estimated the eighty years of imperial nobility which Count Martin brought.  The idea never came to him that she might wish to find love in marriage.

He flattered himself that she would find in it the satisfaction of the luxurious desires which he attributed to her, the joy of making a display of grandeur, the vulgar pride, the material domination, which were for him all the value of life, as he had no ideas on the subject of the happiness of a true woman, although he was sure that his daughter would remain virtuous.

While thinking of his absurd yet natural faith in her, which accorded so badly with his own experiences and ideas regarding women, she smiled with melancholy irony.  And she admired her father the more.

After all, she was not so badly married.  Her husband was as good as any other man.  He had become quite bearable.  Of all that she read in the ashes, in the veiled softness of the lamps, of all her reminiscences, that of their married life was the most vague.  She found a few isolated traits of it, some absurd images, a fleeting and fastidious impression.  The time had not seemed long and had left nothing behind.  Six years had passed, and she did not even remember how she had regained her liberty, so prompt and easy had been her conquest of that husband, cold, sickly, selfish, and polite; of that man dried up and yellowed by business and politics, laborious, ambitious, and commonplace.  He liked women only through vanity, and he never had loved his wife.  The separation had been frank and complete.  And since then, strangers to each other, they felt a tacit, mutual gratitude for their freedom.  She would have had some affection for him if she had not found him hypocritical and too subtle in the art of obtaining her signature when he needed money for enterprises that were more for ostentation than real benefit.  The man with whom she dined and talked every day had no significance for her.

With her cheek in her hand, before the grate, as if she questioned a sibyl, she saw again the face of the Marquis de Re.  She saw it so precisely that it surprised her.  The Marquis de Re had been presented to her by her father, who admired him, and he appeared to her grand and dazzling for his thirty years of intimate triumphs and mundane glories.  His adventures followed him like a procession.  He had captivated three generations of women, and had left in the heart of all those whom he had loved an imperishable memory.  His virile grace, his quiet elegance, and his habit of pleasing had prolonged his youth far beyond the ordinary term of years.  He noticed particularly the young Countess Martin.  The homage of this expert flattered her.  She thought of him now with pleasure.  He had a marvellous art of conversation.  He amused her.  She let him see it, and at once he promised to himself, in his heroic frivolity, to finish worthily his happy life by the subjugation of this young woman whom he appreciated above every one else, and who evidently admired him.  He displayed, to capture her, the most learned stratagems.  But she escaped him very easily.