Marie was perfectly ignorant of the life of such men, involved in complicated affairs and burdened with exacting toil.
Women of society are still under the influence of the traditions of the eighteenth century, in which all positions were definite and assured.
Few women know the harassments in the life of most men who in these days have a position to make and to maintain, a fame to reach, a fortune to consolidate.

Men of settled wealth and position can now be counted; old men alone have time to love; young men are rowing, like Nathan, the galleys of ambition.

Women are not yet resigned to this change of customs; they suppose the same leisure of which they have too much in those who have none; they cannot imagine other occupations, other ends in life than their own.

When a lover has vanquished the Lernean hydra in order to pay them a visit he has no merit in their eyes; they are only grateful to him for the pleasure he gives; they neither know nor care what it costs.

Raoul became aware as he returned from this visit how difficult it would be to hold the reins of a love-affair in society, the ten-horsed chariot of journalism, his dramas on the stage, and his generally involved affairs.
"The paper will be wretched to-night," he thought, as he walked away.
"No article of mine, and only the second number, too!" Madame Felix de Vandenesse drove three times to the Bois de Boulogne without finding Raoul; the third time she came back anxious and uneasy.
The fact was that Nathan did not choose to show himself in the Bois until he could go there as a prince of the press.