g how to be good and kind to her
when they were married. He thus associated her with all his visionary
dreamings. Protected by the purity of his affection against the
obscenity of certain eighteenth-century tales which fell into his hands,
he found particular pleasure in shutting himself up with her in those
humanitarian Utopias which some great minds of our own time, infatuated
by visions of universal happiness have imagined. Miette, in his mind,
became quite essential to the abolition of pauperism and the definitive
triumph of the principles of the Revolution. There were nights of
feverish reading, when his mind could not tear itself from his book,
which he would lay down and take up at least a score of times, nights
of voluptuous weariness which he enjoyed till daybreak like some secret
orgie, cramped up in that tiny room, his eyes troubled by the flickering
yellow light, while he yielded to the fever of insomnia and schemed
out new social schemes of the most absurdly ingenuous nature, in which
woman, always personified by Miette, was worshipped by the nations on
their knees.

He was predisposed to Utopian ideas by certain hereditary influences;
his grandmother's nervous disorders became in him so much chronic
enthusiasm, striving after everything that was grandiose and impossible.
His lonely childhood, his imperfect education, had developed his natural
tendencies in a singular manner. However, he had not yet reached the age
when the fixed idea plants itself in a man's mind. In the morning, after
he had dipped his head in a bucket of water, he remembered his thoughts
and visions of the night but vaguely; nothing remained of his dreams
save a childlike innocence, full of trustful confidence and yearning
tenderness. He felt like a child again. He ran to the well, solely
desirous of meeting his sweetheart's smile, and tasting the delights
of the radiant morning. And during the day, when thoughts of the future
sometimes made him silent and dreamy, he would often, prompted by some
sudden impulse, spring up and kiss aunt Dide on both cheeks, whereat the
old woman would gaze at him anxiously, perturbed at seeing his eyes so
bright, and gleaming with a joy which she thought she could divine.

At last, as time went on, Miette and Silvere began to tire of only
seeing each other's reflection. The novelty of their play was gone, and
now they began to dream of keener pleasures than the well could afford
them. In this longing for