With the courage and constancy that women put into work that pleases them, she would willingly have painted from morning till night; but the connections that Saniel had made did not leave her this liberty.  Through Claudet they made many acquaintances and accepted invitations that placed her under social obligations, so that almost every day she had a visit to pay, a funeral or a marriage to attend, besides an occasional charity fair, and her own day at home, when she listened for three hours to feminine gossip of no interest to her.

As for him, what pleasure could he take in dressing after a hard day’s work to go to a reception?  He, son of a peasant, and a peasant himself in so many ways, who formerly understood nothing of fashionable life and felt only contempt for it, finding it as dull as it was ridiculous.

She tried to find a cause for this change, and when lightly, in a roundabout way, she brought him to explain himself, she could only draw one answer from him, which was no answer to her: 

“We must be of the world.”

Why did he care so much about society?  Was it because she was the sister of a criminal that he wished to take her everywhere and make people receive her?  She understood this up to a certain point, although the part he made her play was the most cruel that he could give her, and entirely contrary to what she would have chosen if she had been free.

But this was all there was in his desire to be of the world.  Because he had married her he was not the brother of a criminal, and on close observation it might be seen that all he desired of these persons in high places whom he sought was their consideration, a part of their importance and honor.  But he did not need this; he was some one by himself.  The position that he had made was worthy of his merit.  His name was honored.  His future was envied.

And yet, as if he did not realize this, he sought small satisfactions, unworthy of a serious ambition.  One evening she was very much surprised when he told her that the decoration of a Spanish republic was offered to him, and although she had formed a habit of watching over her words she could not help exclaiming: 

“What will you do with that?”

“I could not refuse it.”

Not only had he not refused it, but he had accepted others, blue, green, yellow, and tricolored; he wore them in his buttonhole, around his neck, and on his breast.  What good could those decorations do that belittled him?  And how could a man of his merit hasten to obtain the Legion of Honor before it fell to him naturally?

All this was astonishing, mysterious, and silly, and her mind dwelt upon it when she was alone before her easel; while near her in his laboratory, he continued his experiments, or wrote an article in his office for the Review.