"I'm a fool. Here am I, getting married at an age when wise men begin unmarrying. Bah! In spite of everything, I'm still tough and I can still tame a woman."
He recalled, with pride, his last rendezvous with Gratienne; he had conquered her, annihilated her, reduced her to a pulp, and himself, strutting like a cock, had crowed over his happy victim.
"Besides, with Rose, I shall be master. I shall be for her the Man and men in general.... By the way, why hasn't Gratienne written to me since I've been here? Of course, I never gave her my address."
That had been the right thing, he first thought; then he reproached himself for it, felt almost remorseful. He hastily concocted a quite affectionate letter, asking for news. There was a letter-box not far away, on the St. Martin road; he went quickly downstairs and ran there with his missive.
On his return he found Rose in the garden. Since their engagement she had been living in a perpetual smile. She entered naïvely into her destiny, suspecting no further possible obstacle to her happiness. At the same time, by what must have been instinctive coquetry, she had become, not more reserved, but less prompt at their habitual sports. She spoke a great deal of her future house, picturing to herself their drawing-room furniture, which she pictured from the illustrated catalogues, and the colour of their carpets and curtains. The idea of this furniture horrified M. Hervart, who had a taste for antiques and happy discoveries, which he mixed, without shame, with practical constructions made under his own directions. To-day he found it more difficult than usual to tolerate this housewifely chatter. He was bored.
"Can it be," he wondered, "that I feel nothing but a wholly carnal love for her? What's the use of marrying, if I can't see in her the wife, the mother, the lady of the house as well as the mistress? In that case Gratienne is quite enough for me. Marriage is delightful when one is fresh from school. One finds the happiest establishments among students. They live on one another, in one another. Promiscuity seems an enchantment. One makes one's first acquaintance with the opposite sex; one completes oneself. Later on, all this intimacy is no longer possible; and later still, one is very well content with mere amorous visitations while one awaits the moment when solitude brings the only instants of appreciable happiness."