he reserve
of a great lady who can make herself charming and converse agreeably
without permitting a single step into intimacy. This reserve, so little
customary among provincials, pleased Paul immensely. Timid men are shy;
sudden proposals alarm them. They retreat from happiness when it comes
with a rush, and accept misfortune if it presents itself mildly with
gentle shadows. Paul therefore committed himself in his own mind all the
more because he saw no effort on Madame Evangelista's part to bind him.
She fairly seduced him one evening by remarking that to superior women
as well as men there came a period of life when ambition superseded all
the earlier emotions of life.

"That woman is fitted," thought Paul, as he left her, "to advance me in
diplomacy before I am even made a deputy."

If, in all the circumstances of life a man does not turn over and over
both things and ideas in order to examine them thoroughly under their
different aspects before taking action, that man is weak and incomplete
and in danger of fatal failure. At this moment Paul was an optimist; he
saw everything to advantage, and did not tell himself than an ambitious
mother-in-law might prove a tyrant. So, every evening as he left the
house, he fancied himself a married man, allured his mind with its own
thought, and slipped on the slippers of wedlock cheerfully. In the first
place, he had enjoyed his freedom too long to regret the loss of it; he
was tired of a bachelor's life, which offered him nothing new; he
now saw only its annoyances; whereas if he thought at times of the
difficulties of marriage, its pleasures, in which lay novelty, came far
more prominently before his mind.

"Marriage," he said to himself, "is disagreeable for people without
means, but half its troubles disappear before wealth."

Every day some favorable consideration swelled the advantages which he
now saw in this particular alliance.

"No matter to what position I attain, Natalie will always be on the
level of her part," thought he, "and that is no small merit in a woman.
How many of the Empire men I've seen who suffered horribly through their
wives! It is a great condition of happiness not to feel one's pride or
one's vanity wounded by the companion we have chosen. A man can never
be really unhappy with a well-bred wife; she will never make him
ridiculous; such a woman is certain to be useful to him. Natalie will
receive in her own house admirably."

So thinking, he