As a husband, he was pitied; people thought Beatrix inexcusable for deserting the best fellow on earth, and social jeers only touched the woman.  A member of all clubs, subscriber to all the absurdities generated by patriotism or party spirit ill-understood (a compliance which put him in the front rank a propos of all such matters), this loyal, brave, and very silly nobleman, whom unfortunately so many rich men resemble, would naturally desire to distinguish himself by adopting some fashionable mania.  Consequently, he glorified his name principally in being the sultan of a four-footed harem, governed by an old English groom, which cost him monthly from four to five thousand francs.  His specialty was running horses; he protected the equine race and supported a magazine devoted to hippic questions; but, for all that, he knew very little of the animals, and from shoes to bridles he depended wholly on his groom,—­all of which will sufficiently explain to you that this semi-bachelor had nothing actually of his own, neither mind, taste, position, or absurdity; even his fortune came from his fathers.  After having tasted the displeasures of marriage he was so content to find himself once more a bachelor that he said among his friends, “I was born with a caul” (that is, to good luck).

Pleased above all things to be able to live without the costs of making an appearance, to which husbands are constrained, his house, in which since the death of his father nothing had been changed, resembled those of masters who are travelling; he lived there little, never dined, and seldom slept there.  Here follows the reason for such indifference.

After various amorous adventures, bored by women of fashion of the kind who are truly bores, and who plant too many thorny hedges around happiness, he had married after a fashion, as we shall see, a certain Madame Schontz, celebrated in the world of Fanny Beaupre, Susanne du Val-Noble, Florine, Mariette, Jenny Cadine, etc.  This world,—­of which one of our artists wittily remarked at the frantic moment of an opera galop, “When one thinks that all that is lodged and clothed and lives well, what a fine idea it gives us of mankind!”—­this world has already irrupted elsewhere into this history of French manners and customs of the nineteenth century; but to paint it with fidelity, the historian should proportion the number of such personages to the diverse endings of their strange careers, which terminate either in poverty under its most hideous aspect, or by premature death often self-inflicted, or by lucky marriages, occasionally by opulence.