down before her, hiding his knowledge as one hides a sin, speaking his
own language with a thousand circumspections. At any moment it might
have been thought that he was going to blush. She was a queen, he a
child; and now all at once the roles are changed; it is the submissive
subject who arrives in the college cap of a professor, hiding under his
arm an unknown and mysterious book. Is the man in the college cap about
to command, to smile, to obtrude himself and his books, to speak Latin,
to deliver a lecture?

She does not know that this learned individual is trembling, too; that
he is greatly embarrassed over his opening lesson, that emotion has
caused him to forget his Latin, that his throat is parched and his
legs are trembling beneath him. She does not know this, and I tell you
between ourselves, it is not her self-esteem that suffers least at this
conjecture. She suffers at finding herself, after so many signatures,
contracts, and ceremonies-still a charming child, and nothing more.

I believe that the first step in conjugal life will, according to the
circumstances accompanying it, give birth to captivating sympathies or
invincible repulsion. But to give birth to these sympathies, to strike
the spark that is to set light to this explosion of infinite gratitude
and joyful love--what art, what tact, what delicacy, and at the same
time what presence of mind are needed.

How was it that at the first word Georges uttered my terrors vanished?
His voice was so firm and so sweet, he asked me so gayly for leave to
draw near the fire and warm his feet, and spoke to me with such ease
and animation of the incidents of the day. I said to myself, "It is
impossible for the least baseness to be hidden under all this." In
presence of so much good-humor and affability my scaffolding fell to
pieces. I ventured a look from beneath the sheets: I saw him comfortably
installed in the big armchair, and I bit my lips. I am still at a loss
to understand this little fit of ill-temper. When one is reckoning on
a fright, one is really disappointed at its delaying itself. Never had
Georges been more witty, more affectionate, more well-bred; he was still
the man of the day before. He must really have been very excited.

"You are tired out, I am certain, darling," he said.

The word "darling" made me start, but did not frighten me; it was the
first time he had called me so, but I really could not refuse him the
privilege of speaking thus