To live by love
alone, one must dwell somewhere else than in Paris. What difference
would it make to us whether we had only one white percale gown, if the
man we love did not see other women dressed differently, more
elegantly than we--women who inspire ideas by their ways, by a
multitude of little things which really go to make up great passions?
Vanity, my dear, is cousin-german to jealousy, to that beautiful and
noble jealousy which consists in not allowing one's empire to be
invaded, in reigning undisturbed in a soul, and passing one's life
happily in a heart.

"Ah, well, my woman's vanity is on the rack. Though some troubles may
seem petty indeed, I have learned, unfortunately, that in the home
there are no petty troubles. For everything there is magnified by
incessant contact with sensations, with desires, with ideas. Such then
is the secret of that sadness which you have surprised in me and which
I did not care to explain. It is one of those things in which words go
too far, and where writing holds at least the thought within bounds by
establishing it. The effects of a moral perspective differ so
radically between what is said and what is written! All is so solemn,
so serious on paper! One cannot commit any more imprudences. Is it not
this fact which makes a treasure out of a letter where one gives one's
self over to one's thoughts?

"You doubtless thought me wretched, but I am only wounded. You
discovered me sitting alone by the fire, and no Adolphe. I had just
finished putting the children to bed; they were asleep. Adolphe for
the tenth time had been invited out to a house where I do not go,
where they want Adolphe without his wife. There are drawing-rooms
where he goes without me, just at there are many pleasures in which he
alone is the guest. If he were M. de Navarreins and I a d'Espard,
society would never think of separating us; it would want us always
together. His habits are formed; he does not suspect the humiliation
which weighs upon my heart. Indeed, if he had the slightest inkling of
this small sorrow which I am ashamed to own, he would drop society, he
would become more of a prig than the people who come between us. But
he would hamper his progress, he would make enemies, he would raise up
obstacles by imposing me upon the salons where I would be subject to a
thousand slights. That is why I prefer my sufferings to what would
happen were they discovered.

"Adolphe will succeed! He carries my rev