tune to
consolidate. Men of settled wealth and position can now be counted;
old men alone have time to love; young men are rowing, like Nathan,
the galleys of ambition. Women are not yet resigned to this change of
customs; they suppose the same leisure of which they have too much in
those who have none; they cannot imagine other occupations, other ends
in life than their own. When a lover has vanquished the Lernean hydra in
order to pay them a visit he has no merit in their eyes; they are only
grateful to him for the pleasure he gives; they neither know nor care
what it costs. Raoul became aware as he returned from this visit how
difficult it would be to hold the reins of a love-affair in society,
the ten-horsed chariot of journalism, his dramas on the stage, and his
generally involved affairs.

"The paper will be wretched to-night," he thought, as he walked away.
"No article of mine, and only the second number, too!"

Madame Felix de Vandenesse drove three times to the Bois de Boulogne
without finding Raoul; the third time she came back anxious and uneasy.
The fact was that Nathan did not choose to show himself in the Bois
until he could go there as a prince of the press. He employed a whole
week in searching for horses, a phantom and a suitable tiger, and in
convincing his partners of the necessity of saving time so precious
to them, and therefore of charging his equipage to the costs of the
journal. His associates, Massol and du Tillet agreed to this so readily
that he really believed them the best fellows in the world. Without this
help, however, life would have been simply impossible to Raoul; as it
was, it became so irksome that many men, even those of the strongest
constitutions, could not have borne it. A violent and successful
passion takes a great deal of space in an ordinary life; but when it is
connected with a woman in the social position of Madame de Vandenesse
it sucks the life out of a man as busy as Raoul. Here is a list of the
obligations his passion imposed upon him.

Every day, or nearly every day, he was obliged to be on horseback in the
Bois, between two and three o'clock, in the careful dress of a gentleman
of leisure. He had to learn at what house or theatre he could meet
Madame de Vandenesse in the evening. He was not able to leave the party
or the play until long after midnight, having obtained nothing better
than a few tender sentences, long awaited, said in a doorway, or hastily
as he put