The complete sympathy which existed between the two beings he most loved made M. de Nailles very happy.  He had but one thing to complain of in his wife, and that thing was very small.  Since she had married she had completely given up her painting.  He had no knowledge of art himself, and had therefore given her credit for great artistic capacity.  The fact was that in her days of poverty she had never been artist enough to make a living, and now that she was rich she felt inclined to laugh at her own limited ability.  Her practice of art, she said, had only served to give her a knowledge of outline and of color; a knowledge she utilized in her dress and in the smallest details of house decoration and furniture.  Everything she wore, everything that surrounded her, was arranged to perfection.  She had a genius for decoration, for furniture, for trifles, and brought her artistic knowledge to bear even on the tying of a ribbon, or the arrangement of a nosegay.

“This is all I retain of your lessons,” she said sometimes to Hubert Marien, when recalling to his memory the days in which she sought his advice as to how to prepare herself for the “struggle for life.”

This phrase was amusing when it proceeded from her lips.  What!—­“struggle for life” with those little delicate, soft, childlike hands?  How absurd!  She laughed at the idea now, and all those who heard her laughed with her; Marien laughed more than any one.  He, who had befriended her in her days of adversity, seemed to retain for the Baroness in her prosperity the same respectful and discreet devotion he had shown her as Mademoiselle Hecker.  He had sent a wonderful portrait of her, as the wife of M. de Nailles, to the Salon—­a portrait that the richer electors of Grandchaux, who had voted for her husband and who could afford to travel, gazed at with satisfaction, congratulating themselves that they had a deputy who had married so pretty a woman.  It even seemed as if the beauty of Madame de Nailles belonged in some sort to the arrondissement, so proud were those who lived there of having their share in her charms.

Another portrait—­that of M. de Nailles himself—­was sent down to Limouzin from Paris, and all the peasants in the country round were invited to come and look at it.  That also produced a very favorable impression on the rustic public, and added to the popularity of their deputy.  Never had the proprietor of Grandchaux looked so grave, so dignified, so majestic, so absorbed in deep reflection, as he looked standing beside a table covered with papers—­papers, no doubt, all having relation to local interests, important to the public and to individuals.  It was the very figure of a statesman destined to high dignities.  No one who gazed on such a deputy could doubt that one day he would be in the ministry.