had taken the trouble to be born, but not like the grand
seigneurs whom Beaumarchais made fun of once upon a time, was ballasted
with a respectable number of millions, as is becoming in the sole heir
of a house that had sold household utensils and appliances for over a
century.

Naturally, like every other upstart who respects himself, he wished to
appear something, to play at being a clubman, and also to play to the
gallery, because he had been educated at Vangirard and knew a little
English; because he had gone through his voluntary service in the army
for twelve months[19] at Rouen; because he was a tolerable singer, could
drive four-in-hands, and play lawn-tennis.

[Footnote 19: Although, in France, as in Germany, military service is
compulsory, men are allowed to serve in both countries as _one-year
volunteers_; they enjoy certain privileges, find their own uniform, &c.,
and it, of course, entails considerable expense.--TRANSLATOR.]

Always studiedly well-dressed, too correct in every way, copying his way
of speaking, his hats and his trousers from the three or four snobs who
set the fashion, reproducing other people's witticisms, learning
anecdotes and jokes by heart, like a lesson, to use them again at small
parties, constantly laughing, without knowing why his friends burst into
roars of merriment, and was in the habit of keeping pretty girls for the
pleasure of his best friends. Of course he was a perfect fool, but after
all, a capital fellow, to whom it was only right to extend a good deal
of indulgence.

When he had taken his thirty-first mistress, and had made the discovery
that in love, money does not create happiness two-thirds of the time,
that they had all deceived him, and made him perfectly ridiculous at the
end of the week, Charles Dupontel made up his mind to settle down as a
respectable married man, and to marry, not from calculation or from
reason, but for love.

One autumn afternoon at Auteuil, he noticed in front of the club stand,
among the number of pretty women who were standing round the braziers, a
girl with such lovely delicate complexion that it looked like an apple
blossom; her hair was like threads of gold, and she was so slight and
supple that she reminded him of those outlines of saints which one sees
in old stained-glass church windows. There was also something
enigmatical about her, for she had at the same time the delightfully
ingenuous look of a school girl during the holidays