for the satisfaction of playing mistress of a great household than for
that of knowing what her family would think of her marriage.

Calyste, with easy indifference, was quite willing to let his
sister-in-law Clotilde and his mother-in-law the duchess guide him in
all matters of social life, and they were both very grateful for his
obedience. He obtained the place in society which was due to his name,
his fortune, and his alliance. The success of his wife, who was
regarded as one of the most charming women in Paris, the diversions of
high society, the duties to be fulfilled, the winter amusements of the
great city, gave a certain fresh life to the happiness of the young
household by producing a series of excitements and interludes. Sabine,
considered happy by her mother and sister, who saw in Calyste's
coolness an effect of his English education, cast aside her gloomy
notions; she heard her lot so envied by many unhappily married women
that she drove her terrors from her into the region of chimeras, until
the time when her pregnancy gave additional guarantees to this neutral
sort of union, guarantees which are usually augured well of by
experienced women. In October, 1839, the young Baronne du Guenic had a
son, and committed the mistake of nursing it herself, on the theory of
most women in such cases. How is it possible, they think, not to be
wholly the mother of the child of an idolized husband?

Toward the end of the following summer, in August, 1840, Sabine had
nearly reached the period when the duty of nursing her first child
would come to an end. Calyste, during his two years' residence in
Paris, had completely thrown off that innocence of mind the charm of
which had so adorned his earliest appearance in the world of passion.
He was now the comrade of the young Duc Georges de Maufrigneuse,
lately married, like himself, to an heiress, Berthe de Cinq-Cygne; of