My love is my life.
If I, without apparent motive, suggest to a young girl accustomed to
luxury, to elegance, to a life fruitful of all enjoyments of art, a
young girl who loves to idly listen at the opera to Rossini's music,
--if to her I should propose that she deprive herself of fifteen
hundred thousand francs in favor of broken-down old men, or scrofulous
paupers, she would turn her back on me and laugh, or her confidential
friend would tell her that I'm a crazy jester. If in an ecstasy of
love, I should paint to her the charms of a modest life, and a little
home on the banks of the Loire; if I were to ask her to sacrifice her
Parisian life on the altar of our love, it would be, in the first
place, a virtuous lie; in the next, I might only be opening the way to
some painful experience; I might lose the heart of a girl who loves
society, and balls, and personal adornment, and _me_ for the time being.
Some slim and jaunty officer, with a well-frizzed moustache, who can
play the piano, quote Lord Byron, and ride a horse elegantly, may get
her away from me. What shall I do? For Heaven's sake, give me some
advice!"
The honest man, that species of puritan not unlike the father of
Jeannie Deans, of whom I have already told you, and who, up to the
present moment hadn't uttered a word, shrugged his shoulders, as he
looked at me and said:--
"Idiot! why did you ask him if he came from Beauvais?"
ADDENDUM
The following personages appear in other stories of the Human Comedy.
Pages:
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