These letters give a perfect explanation of the secret relation between husband and wife.  Sabine thought of a love marriage where Calyste saw only a marriage of expediency.  The joys of the honey-moon had not altogether conformed to the legal requirements of the social system.

During the stay of the married pair in Brittany the work of restoring and furnishing the hotel du Guenic had been carried on by the celebrated architect Grindot, under the superintendence of Clotilde and the Duc and Duchesse de Grandlieu, all arrangements having been made for the return of the young household to Paris in December, 1838.  Sabine installed herself in the rue de Bourbon with pleasure,—­less for the satisfaction of playing mistress of a great household than for that of knowing what her family would think of her marriage.

Calyste, with easy indifference, was quite willing to let his sister-in-law Clotilde and his mother-in-law the duchess guide him in all matters of social life, and they were both very grateful for his obedience.  He obtained the place in society which was due to his name, his fortune, and his alliance.  The success of his wife, who was regarded as one of the most charming women in Paris, the diversions of high society, the duties to be fulfilled, the winter amusements of the great city, gave a certain fresh life to the happiness of the young household by producing a series of excitements and interludes.  Sabine, considered happy by her mother and sister, who saw in Calyste’s coolness an effect of his English education, cast aside her gloomy notions; she heard her lot so envied by many unhappily married women that she drove her terrors from her into the region of chimeras, until the time when her pregnancy gave additional guarantees to this neutral sort of union, guarantees which are usually augured well of by experienced women.  In October, 1839, the young Baronne du Guenic had a son, and committed the mistake of nursing it herself, on the theory of most women in such cases.  How is it possible, they think, not to be wholly the mother of the child of an idolized husband?

Toward the end of the following summer, in August, 1840, Sabine had nearly reached the period when the duty of nursing her first child would come to an end.  Calyste, during his two years’ residence in Paris, had completely thrown off that innocence of mind the charm of which had so adorned his earliest appearance in the world of passion.  He was now the comrade of the young Duc Georges de Maufrigneuse, lately married, like himself, to an heiress, Berthe de Cinq-Cygne; of the Vicomte Savinien de Portenduere, the Duc and Duchesse de Rhetore, the Duc and Duchesse de Lenoncourt-Chaulieu, and all the habitues of his mother-in-law’s salon; and he fully understood by this time the differences that separated Parisian life from the life of the provinces.  Wealth has fatal hours, hours of leisure and idleness, which Paris knows better than all other capitals how to amuse,