To M. de Negrepelisse pondering over the eligible bachelors of the province with these double requirements in his mind.  M. de Bargeton seemed to be the only one who answered to this description.  M. de Bargeton, aged forty, considerably shattered by the amorous dissipations of his youth, was generally held to be a man of remarkably feeble intellect; but he had just the exact amount of commonsense required for the management of his fortune, and breeding sufficient to enable him to avoid blunders or blatant follies in society in Angouleme.  In the bluntest manner M. de Negrepelisse pointed out the negative virtues of the model husband designed for his daughter, and made her see the way to manage him so as to secure her own happiness.  So Nais married the bearer of arms, two hundred years old already, for the Bargeton arms are blazoned thus:  the first or, three attires gules; the second, three ox’s heads cabossed, two and one, sable; the third, barry of six, azure and argent, in the first, six shells or, three, two, and one.  Provided with a chaperon, Nais could steer her fortunes as she chose under the style of the firm, and with the help of such connections as her wit and beauty would obtain for her in Paris.  Nais was enchanted by the prospect of such liberty.  M. de Bargeton was of the opinion that he was making a brilliant marriage, for he expected that in no long while M. de Negrepelisse would leave him the estates which he was rounding out so lovingly; but to an unprejudiced spectator it certainly seemed as though the duty of writing the bridegroom’s epitaph might devolve upon his father-in-law.

By this time Mme. de Bargeton was thirty-six years old and her husband fifty-eight.  The disparity in age was the more startling since M. de Bargeton looked like a man of seventy, whereas his wife looked scarcely half her age.  She could still wear rose-color, and her hair hanging loose upon her shoulders.  Although their income did not exceed twelve thousand francs, they ranked among the half-dozen largest fortunes in the old city, merchants and officials excepted; for M. and Mme. de Bargeton were obliged to live in Angouleme until such time as Mme. de Bargeton’s inheritance should fall in and they could go to Paris.  Meanwhile they were bound to be attentive to old M. de Negrepelisse (who kept them waiting so long that his son-in-law in fact predeceased him), and Nais’ brilliant intellectual gifts, and the wealth that lay like undiscovered ore in her nature, profited her nothing, underwent the transforming operation of Time and changed to absurdities.  For our absurdities spring, in fact, for the most part, from the good in us, from some faculty or quality abnormally developed.  Pride, untempered by intercourse with the great world becomes stiff and starched by contact with petty things; in a loftier moral atmosphere it would have grown to noble magnanimity.  Enthusiasm, that virtue within a virtue, forming the saint, inspiring the devotion