of lofty
intelligence which some superior minds suppose must exist in every
being. But Augustine was too sincerely religious not to take fright
at the tone of artists. At the first dinner Theodore gave, she heard
a young painter say, with the childlike lightness, which to her was
unintelligible, and which redeems a jest from the taint of profanity,
"But, madame, your Paradise cannot be more beautiful than Raphael's
Transfiguration!--Well, and I got tired of looking at that."

Thus Augustine came among this sparkling set in a spirit of distrust
which no one could fail to see. She was a restraint on their freedom.
Now an artist who feels restraint is pitiless; he stays away, or laughs
it to scorn. Madame Guillaume, among other absurdities, had an excessive
notion of the dignity she considered the prerogative of a married woman;
and Augustine, though she had often made fun of it, could not help a
slight imitation of her mother's primness. This extreme propriety, which
virtuous wives do not always avoid, suggested a few epigrams in the
form of sketches, in which the harmless jest was in such good taste
that Sommervieux could not take offence; and even if they had been
more severe, these pleasantries were after all only reprisals from
his friends. Still, nothing could seem a trifle to a spirit so open as
Theodore's to impressions from without. A coldness insensibly crept over
him, and inevitably spread. To attain conjugal happiness we must climb
a hill whose summit is a narrow ridge, close to a steep and slippery
descent: the painter's love was falling down it. He regarded his wife as
incapable of appreciating the moral considerations which justified him
in his own eyes for his singular behavior to her, and believed himself
quite innocent in hiding from her thoughts she could not enter into,
and peccadilloes outside the jurisdiction of a _bourgeois_ conscience.
Augustine wrapped herself in sullen and silent grief. These unconfessed
feelings placed a shroud between the husband and wife which could not
fail to grow thicker day by day. Though her husband never failed in
consideration for her, Augustine could not help trembling as she saw
that he kept for the outer world those treasures of wit and grace that
he formerly would lay at her feet. She soon began to find sinister
meaning in the jocular speeches that are current in the world as to the
inconstancy of men. She made no complaints, but her demeanor conveyed
reproach.

T