e! How I must have bored her! After having read her my
verses, I explained them to her, seeking in her beautiful astonished
eyes the hoped-for gleam of light, ever fancying I should surprise it.

[Illustration: p095-106]

I obliged her to give me her opinion and I passed over all that was
foolish to retain only what a chance inspiration might contain of good.
I so longed to make of her my true help mate, the real artist's wife!
But no! She could not understand. In vain did I read to her the great
poets, choosing the strongest, the tenderest,--the golden rhymes of the
love poems fell upon her ear as coldly and tediously as a hailstorm.
Once I remember, we were reading _la Nuit d'Octobre_; she interrupted
me, to ask for something more serious! I tried then to explain to her
that there is nothing in the world more serious than poetry, which is
the very essence of life, floating above it like a glory of light,
in the % vibrations of which words and thoughts are elevated and
transfigured. Oh! what a disdainful smile passed over her pretty mouth
and what condescension in her glance! As though a child or a madman had
spoken to her.

What have I not thus wasted of strength and useless eloquence! Nothing
was of any use. I stumbled perpetually against what she called good
sense, reason, that eternal excuse of dried up hearts and narrow minds.
And it was not only poetry that bored her. Before our marriage, I had
believed her to be a musician. She seemed to understand the pieces
she played, aided by the underlinings of her teacher. Scarcely was she
married when she closed her piano, and gave up her music.

[Illustration: p099-110]

Can there be anything more melancholy than this abandonment by the young
wife of all that had pleased in the young girl? The reply given, the
part ended, the actress quits her costume. It was all done with a view
to marriage; a surface of petty accomplishments, of pretty smiles, and
fleeting elegance. With her the change was instantaneous. At first I
hoped that the taste I could not give her, an artistic intelligence and
love of the beautiful, would come to her in spite of herself, through
the medium of this wonderful Paris, with its unconscious refining
influence on eyes and mind. But what can be done with a woman who does
not know how to open a book, to look at a picture, who is always bored
and refuses to see anything? I soon understood that I must resign myself
to have by my side nothing but a h