l 1801 (in spite of the
risk he ran from the revolutionary decrees), so that he might not thwart
the Spanish fanaticism which his wife had sucked in with her mother's
milk: later, when public worship was restored in France, he accompanied
her to mass every Sunday. His passion never ceased to be that of
a lover. The protecting power, which women like so much, was never
exercised by this husband, lest to that wife it might seem pity. He
treated her with exquisite flattery as an equal, and sometimes mutinied
against her, as men will, as though to brave the supremacy of a pretty
woman. His lips wore a smile of happiness, his speech was ever tender;
he loved his Josephine for herself and for himself, with an ardor that
crowned with perpetual praise the qualities and the loveliness of a
wife.

Fidelity, often the result of social principle, religious duty, or
self-interest on the part of a husband, was in this case involuntary,
and not without the sweet flatteries of the spring-time of love. Duty
was the only marriage obligation unknown to these lovers, whose love was
equal; for Balthazar Claes found the complete and lasting realization of
his hopes in Mademoiselle de Temninck; his heart was satisfied but not
wearied, the man within him was ever happy.

Not only did the daughter of Casa-Real derive from her Spanish blood the
intuition of that science which varies pleasure and makes it infinite,
but she possessed the spirit of unbounded self-devotion, which is the
genius of her sex as grace is that of beauty. Her love was a blind
fanaticism which, at a nod, would have sent her joyously to her death.
Balthazar's own delicacy had exalted the generous emotions of his
wife, and inspired her with an imperious need of giving more than she
received. This mutual exchange of happiness which each lavished upon
the other, put the mainspring of her life visibly outside of her
personality, and filled her words, her looks, her actions, with an
ever-growing love. Gratitude fertilized and varied the life of each
heart; and the certainty of being all in all to one another excluded the
paltry things of existence, while it magnified the smallest accessories.

The deformed woman whom her husband thinks straight, the lame woman whom
he would not have otherwise, the old woman who seems ever young--are
they not the happiest creatures of the feminine world? Can human passion
go beyond it? The glory of a woman is to be adored for a defect. To
forge