Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 4.djvu/22

As for Chaverny, he was rather a fine-looking man, a little too stout for his age, clean-skinned and ruddy, not by nature given to those vague uneasinesses which often torture the imaginative. He piously believed that his wife felt for him a calm affection (he was too much of a philosopher to believe that he was loved as upon the first day of his married life), and this belief caused him neither pain nor pleasure; if the contrary had been true, he would have made the best of it in the same way. He had served for some years in a cavalry regiment, but falling heir to considerable fortune he took a dislike to a soldier's life, retired from the army and married. It may seem a somewhat difficult undertaking to try to explain the marriage of two people who had not a single idea in common. On the one hand, grandparents and officious friends, who, like Phrosine, would marry the Venetian Republic to the Grand Turk, had busied themselves in arranging matters. On the other hand Chaverny belonged to a good family; in those days he was not too stout; he was merry and he was, in the full acceptation of the term, what is called "a good fellow." Julie was always glad to see him come to her mother's house because he made her laugh with his tales of the army, tales in a vein of humorous wit which was not always of the most unquestionable taste. She