en he
married, brought his income, including that from the fortune of his
wife, to a thousand francs a day. To a gentleman endowed with a nature
such as Mademoiselle des Touches had described it in a few words to
Calyste, such wealth was happiness enough. While his wife continued in
her home and fulfilled the duties of maternity, Rochefide enjoyed this
immense fortune; but he did not spend it any more than he expended the
faculties of his mind. His good, stout vanity, gratified by the figure
he presented as a handsome man (to which he owed a few successes that
authorized him to despise women), allowed itself free scope in the
matter of brains. Gifted with the sort of mind which we must call a
reflector, he appropriated the sallies of others, the wit of the stage
and the _petits journaux_, by his method of repeating them, and applied
them as formulas of criticism. His military joviality (he had served
in the Royal Guard) seasoned conversation with so much point that women
without any intellects proclaimed him witty, and the rest did not dare
to contradict them.

This system Arthur pursued in all things; he owed to nature the
convenient genius of imitation without mimicry; he imitated seriously.
Thus without any taste of his own, he knew how to be the first to adopt
and the first to abandon a new fashion. Accused of nothing worse than
spending too much time at his toilet and wearing a corset, he presented
the type of those persons who displease no one by adopting incessantly
the ideas and the follies of everbody, and who, astride of circumstance,
never grow old.

As a husband, he was pitied; people thought Beatrix inexcusable for
deserting the best fellow on earth, and social jeers only touched
the woman. A member of all clubs, subscriber to all the absurdities
generated by patriotism or party spirit ill-understood (a compliance
which put him in the front rank _a propos_ of all such matters), this
loyal, brave, and very silly nobleman, whom unfortunately so many rich
men resemble, would naturally desire to distinguish himself by adopting
some fashionable mania. Consequently, he glorified his name principally
in being the sultan of a four-footed harem, governed by an old English
groom, which cost him monthly from four to five thousand francs.
His specialty was _running horses;_ he protected the equine race and
supported a magazine devoted to hippic questions; but, for all that, he
knew very little of the animals, and fro