ed prejudices; in short, you can grasp the profits of
a situation in which I should find nothing but ill-luck. Your cool,
systematic, possibly true deductions are, to the eyes of the masses,
shockingly immoral. I belong to the masses. I must play my game of life
according to the rules of the society in which I am forced to live.
While putting yourself above all human things on peaks of ice, you still
have feelings; but as for me, I should freeze to death. The life of that
great majority, to which I belong in my commonplace way, is made up
of emotions of which I now have need. Often a man coquets with a dozen
women and obtains none. Then, whatever be his strength, his cleverness,
his knowledge of the world, he undergoes convulsions, in which he is
crushed as between two gates. For my part, I like the peaceful chances
and changes of life; I want that wholesome existence in which we find a
woman always at our side."

"A trifle indecorous, your marriage!" exclaimed de Marsay.

Paul was not to be put out of countenance, and continued: "Laugh if you
like; I shall feel myself a happy man when my valet enters my room
in the morning and says: 'Madame is awaiting monsieur for breakfast';
happier still at night, when I return to find a heart--"

"Altogether indecorous, my dear Paul. You are not yet moral enough to
marry."

"--a heart in which to confide my interests and my secrets. I wish
to live in such close union with a woman that our affection shall not
depend upon a yes or a no, or be open to the disillusions of love. In
short, I have the necessary courage to become, as you say, a worthy
husband and father. I feel myself fitted for family joys; I wish to put
myself under the conditions prescribed by society; I desire to have a
wife and children."

"You remind me of a hive of honey-bees! But go your way, you'll be a
dupe all your life. Ha, ha! you wish to marry to have a wife! In other
words, you wish to solve satisfactorily to your own profit the most
difficult problem invented by those bourgeois morals which were created
by the French Revolution; and, what is more, you mean to begin your
attempt by a life of retirement. Do you think your wife won't crave the
life you say you despise? Will _she_ be disgusted with it, as you are?
If you won't accept the noble conjugality just formulated for your
benefit by your friend de Marsay, listen, at any rate, to his final
advice. Remain a bachelor for the next thirteen years; amuse