Happy is the wife of a man whose days are occupied.

If you heard the complaints of women who have to endure the burden of an idle husband, either a man without duties, or one so rich as to have nothing to do, you would know that the highest happiness of a Parisian wife is freedom,--the right to rule in her own home.

Now we writers and men of functions and occupations, we leave the sceptre to our wives; we cannot descend to the tyranny of little minds; we have something better to do.

If I ever marry,--which I assure you is a catastrophe very remote at the present moment,--I should wish my wife to enjoy the same moral freedom that a mistress enjoys, and which is perhaps the real source of her attraction." Canalis talked on, displaying the warmth of his fancy and all his graces, for Modeste's benefit, as he spoke of love, marriage, and the adoration of women, until Monsieur Mignon, who had rejoined them, seized the opportunity of a slight pause to take his daughter's arm and lead her up to Ernest de La Briere, whom he had been advising to seek an open explanation with her.
"Mademoiselle," said Ernest, in a voice that was scarcely his own, "it is impossible for me to remain any longer under the weight of your displeasure.

I do not defend myself; I do not seek to justify my conduct; I desire only to make you see that _before_ reading your most flattering letter, addressed to the individual and no longer to the poet,--the last which you sent to me,--I wished, and I told you in my note written at Havre that I wished, to correct the error under which you were acting.