was noble and in a good position, the marquise
was rich; everything in the match, therefore, seemed suitable: and
indeed it was deferred only for the space of time necessary to complete
the year of mourning, and the marriage was celebrated towards the
beginning of the year 1558. The marquis was twenty years of age, and the
marquise twenty-two.

The beginnings of this union were perfectly happy; the marquis was in
love for the first time, and the marquise did not remember ever to have
been in love. A son and a daughter came to complete their happiness.
The marquise had entirely forgotten the fatal prediction, or, if she
occasionally thought of it now, it was to wonder that she could ever
have believed in it. Such happiness is not of this world, and when by
chance it lingers here a while, it seems sent rather by the anger
than by the goodness of God. Better, indeed, would it be for him who
possesses and who loses it, never to have known it.

The Marquis de Ganges was the first to weary of this happy life. Little
by little he began to miss the pleasures of a young man; he began to
draw away from the marquise and to draw nearer to his former friends.
On her part, the marquise, who for the sake of wedded intimacy had
sacrificed her habits of social life, threw herself into society, where
new triumphs awaited her. These triumphs aroused the jealousy of the
marquis; but he was too much a man of his century to invite ridicule by
any manifestation; he shut his jealousy into his soul, and it emerged in
a different form on every different occasion. To words of love, so sweet
that they seemed the speech of angels, succeeded those bitter and biting
utterances that foretell approaching division. Before long, the marquis
and the marquise only saw each other at hours when they could not avoid
meeting; then, on the pretext of necessary journeys, and presently
without any pretext at all, the marquis would go away for three-quarters
of a year, and once more the marquise found herself widowed. Whatever
contemporary account one may consult, one finds them all agreeing to
declare that she was always the same--that is to say, full of patience,
calmness, and becoming behaviour--and it is rare to find such a
unanimity of opinion about a young and beautiful woman.

About this time the marquis, finding it unendurable to be alone with his
wife during the short spaces of time which he spent at home, invited
his two brothers, the chevalier and th