fondness, however; he was absorbed in his work. The poetry in his composition was used up in the exciting scenes of his romances; in real life, the middle-class man, fond of his ease, demanding no more than the comfort and peace of an affection which was kindly, and not too exacting, claimed the upper hand. He was affectionate, attentive, always good-humoured—the easiest man in the world to live with. Jeanne never dreamt of any cause for complaint; she thought herself very happy, and if, now and again, a scarcely acknowledged yearning after something more came over her in her sadder moments, she quickly reproached herself with ingratitude; she compared her life of dreary dulness, as a young girl, with her life as a woman, and concluded, like her friends at Rouen, that she had been uncommonly lucky.
On her first arrival in Paris, she felt at once that she had a great deal to learn, a great deal more to forget. She was humble and unobtrusive; the timidity of the young bride from the provinces who felt herself strange in an unknown country excused her silence, while the vivacious intelligence in her eyes precluded the possibility of belief in her dulness. She studied and prepared herself that her husband should never have cause to blush for an awkwardness on her part, nor for an ignorance innocently displayed. Jeanne had feminine tact in a high degree, and an almost morbid fear of ridicule.
By degrees she grew hardy; without having really any great originality, she had plenty of spirited life and gaiety natural to her. People began to notice and talk about her; finally, she was somebody. With the years, too, the well-being of their house was more and more established, and they were well off. At the commencement of their married life, the du Boys had been content with a suite of rooms, well furnished, indeed; but, after all, a suite like anybody else's. Karl was making at the rate of twenty thousand francs a year, and considered himself rich, and at the time when Madame du Boys was disguising her elegant, though, perhaps, rather slender person (she was lissom and graceful, however) as the miller's wife, for a masked ball, the suite had been exchanged for a delightful little house on the Avenue de Villiers some two years since.
"He gesticulated wildly."
Jeanne, slightly dazzled, enjoyed this prosperity to the full. The six years of her married life had formed her character; her timidity, which had become useless to her, was cast aside, like the short frocks of her girlhood. This life of movement, this life of worldly pleasure, had, by degrees, become necessary to her. Her husband had never associated her in any way with his work; he had considered her as a child, ignorant enough, brought up in the narrowing boundary of her father's commercial surroundings, without much regard to intellectual ideas. He had noted, with pleasure, that she did not lack natural intelligence; but of the changes which had taken place in her since her marriage he took very slight note, he was so fully taken up with his work. His study was a sacred place, even for his wife. Silence was a necessity to him, as was also complete isolation. He required a wide space to walk up and down in while he gesticulated wildly, in pursuit of a happy inspiration or an apt and neat reply. He had come to have whims as
