Madame was not hard to persuade. She looked a dainty miller's wife, out of a comic opera. The bright red petticoat was very short, the woollen apron draped to look like an overskirt, tightly drawn back and gathered into a large puff below the waist; the enormous straw hat was furnished with a miniature windmill perched on the crown; a fairy's flour sack slung on the shoulder, and the sabots—the pretty little sabots! She was greatly amused to see herself thus, and while watching her reflection in the mirror, she thought of her youth, how dull it had been, and pitied it.
Jeanne Reynard was only a Parisian since her marriage; this will explain how it happened that she was now more Parisian than any body else. Her father, a merchant of Rouen, had given her a hundred thousand francs as dowry, and at twenty-two she had been married to Karl du Boys, whom she had known in her childhood, under the name of Charles Dubois, a poor neighbour.
The poor neighbour had become one of the great men of his country, and it was considered that little Jeanne had been lucky in marrying him. Jeanne was now of the same way of thinking herself. Karl du Boys had made a place apart for himself in literature. Without being a man of genius, he had much talent, of the supple kind which lends itself easily to the popular vein of the moment—novelist, journalist, critic, historian, as the occasion suited. Everything he did was easy, prettily turned, airy, and light, and amusing. He seemed to be himself the incarnation of good humour, and at an epoch when most literature was of a sad and depressing character, despairing woe forming the chief element both in romance and in verse, the good, healthy tone of Karl du Boys' writings brought something like a requisite consolation to the minds of the general public. Success flowed in on him with a rapidity sufficient to turn a head less solidly planted than Karl's, but he was wise in his intelligence; the exaggerated eulogy which would have placed him on a level with writers of real genius he treated with a protesting shrug of the shoulders. He had the rare virtue of modesty.
The marriage had been brought about, like many other marriages, by a train of circumstances rather than through any irresistible attraction between the two interested parties. Mother Dubois had always coveted little Reynard and her hundred thousand francs for her son: the ease, which had come by degrees through this son, had put her at last on a footing of equality with the Reynards; her ambition stopped there. They might talk to her as they liked about her son being able to find a more brilliant match for himself in Paris now that his name was so often in the papers. She shook her head; with a marriage like that she would have nothing to do. She wished, in marrying her son, to give him a wife of her own choosing. She made the first advances; Monsieur Reynard hesitated. The merchant, who had gained his fortune little by little, put small confidence in fame so sudden and wide as this; but when the young man had paid a visit to Rouen, and he had seen him so fêted and coveted by other families, he decided to consult his daughter. The young people saw each other after a long period of separation, for Jeanne had been at school, and Karl had rarely visited Rouen. She found him charming; the name which he had recast from the paternal one, and which he had rendered celebrated, did not displease her; besides, she was wearied to death of her dull existence. Her mother was dead; her two sisters married and far away; her father, absorbed in his business, took her nowhere into society: and her greatest pleasure in life was to listen to Madame Dubois singing the praises of her wonderful son.
Karl, when he paid that visit, had no intention of marrying. He was barely thirty, and his bachelor life in Paris in nowise disagreed with his tastes. However, this little neighbour, whom he had dandled on his knees; this young girl, whom he encountered in the kindly intimacy of his mother's house, set him dreaming of domestic happiness; he never knew exactly how it happened, but, when he left Rouen, he was engaged to Mademoiselle Reynard, and the wedding day was set. He was too busy to be a very ardent lover: he wrote to Jeanne every week, and received timid little replies, which gave Jeanne an infinitude of trouble—to write to a novelist frightened her. She was greatly astonished to find the letters of this novelist very simple and natural, and as far differing as possible from what she imagined should be the style of a literary man. In point of fact, they knew very little of each other when marriage threw them into each other's arms.
Karl soon became sincerely attached to his young wife; there was no passion in his
