It was a union of perfect happiness. M. de Bergerac’s modest income was more than enough for the Arcadian existence which he and his young wife led in the Berkshire farm-house. The curate’s daughter was country-bred, and was a fitting mistress for such an establishment. She brought the garden to the rarest perfection of floricultural beauty, and she distinguished herself by the administration of a wonderful poultry-yard. She was as happy as the summer day was long among her simple duties; while he, who in her eyes appeared the greatest of human scholars and the most adorable of men, sat alone in the sacred chamber, which she entered always with subdued footsteps, as if it had been a religious temple. It was her pride and delight to be useful to the man she loved. She worked for him, and managed for him, and hoarded for him; and he found himself all the richer, even in the matter of sordid cash, for her sweet companionship. The student, looking up from his books and manuscripts, beheld cows grazing in the rich meadow before his window, and was told that the cows were his, and that the produce of those stupid creatures could be transformed into money, with which rare old black-letter volumes and manuscripts of unspeakable value could be bought in London sale-rooms. For seven years Theodore de Bergerac tasted the perfection of calm domestic happiness, and then the cup was snatched away from him. The bright face faded; the indefatigable housewife was fain to rest from her beloved labours. Little by little the bitter truth--which at first seemed almost an impossibility--came home to the stricken heart of the husband, and he knew that he was doomed to survive his young wife. The dreaded hour came, and she left him--very lonely without her, but, happily, not quite alone. She left one little girl--a fairer and brighter likeness of herself; and upon this young life the widower set his hopes of earthly happiness. It was only natural that his unfinished book should become so much the dearer to him by reason of this great human sorrow. The stricken heart refused all comfort, but the agonized mind sought to beguile itself into forgetfulness of pain. The student went back to his books, and buried himself more deeply than of old amidst the ruins and ashes of the past. His days were spent at his desk. His soul, sorely stricken in this lower world of hard realities, wandered away and lost itself in the infinite regions of mythic poetry. As the years crept past him unawares, and his daughter blossomed into early womanhood, and the same bright face peeped in again at his window which had shone upon him in the brief happiness of his married life, it almost seemed to him as if that terrible anguish, that desolating loss, had been no more than a dreadful dream.