handsome hands and feet, blue eyes with long lashes, black hair,
graceful motions, a chest voice which kept to its middle tones and
vibrated in the listener's heart, harmonized well with his sobriquet.
Paul was indeed that delicate flower which needs such careful culture,
the qualities of which display themselves only in a moist and suitable
soil,--a flower which rough treatment dwarfs, which the hot sun burns,
and a frost lays low. He was one of those men made to receive
happiness, rather than to give it; who have something of the woman in
their nature, wishing to be divined, understood, encouraged; in short,
a man to whom conjugal love ought to come as a providence.

If such a character creates difficulties in private life, it is
gracious and full of attraction for the world. Consequently, Paul had
great success in the narrow social circle of the provinces, where his
mind, always, so to speak, in half-tints, was better appreciated than
in Paris.

The arrangement of his house and the restoration of the chateau de
Lanstrac, where he introduced the comfort and luxury of an English
country-house, absorbed the capital saved by the notary during the
preceding six years. Reduced now to his strict income of forty-odd
thousand a year, he thought himself wise and prudent in so regulating
his household as not to exceed it.

After publicly exhibiting his equipages, entertaining the most
distinguished young men of the place, and giving various hunting
parties on the estate at Lanstrac, Paul saw very plainly that
provincial life would never do without marriage. Too young to employ
his time in miserly occupations, or in trying to interest himself in
the speculative improvements in which provincials sooner or later