We saw my mother, but only very seldom; she considered that we played whist badly at our house. The Girauds came sometimes to see us; they were still busily engaged in negotiating marriages. I gave myself the pleasure of having them, with Bélan and his wife, at my house. There was a rattling discharge of epigrams on the part of Giraud. The superb Armide did not seem to notice them, and as for Bélan, he entrenched himself behind his wife, whose servant he seemed to be, and to whom he never spoke without bowing. In the large parties, the boisterous entertainments which we frequently attended, there were some pretty married women, and some exceedingly pretty unmarried ones. I will frankly confess that I sometimes surprised myself, oblivious of the fact that I was married, making eyes at the ladies and paying court to the young women; the latter did not respond to my glances; the fact that I was a married man prevented them from taking any notice of me; but it was not always the same with the others. Those periods of forgetfulness, however, lasted only for an instant; then I was greatly surprised to find that I had been behaving like a bachelor. There is no great harm in casting a soft glance at another woman than one’s wife; but if Eugénie had done as much, if she had cast such a glance at a man, I should have considered it very wrong. Surely I did not regret that I was married; why then did I behave sometimes in society as if I were not? But that apparent frivolity was due to my disposition and not to my heart. I do not consider that because a man is married he must necessarily behave like an owl, and never dare to laugh and jest except with his wife; in that case marriage would be too heavy a chain. I went sometimes to see Ernest; he too, was a father, the father of a little boy. He and Marguerite were happy beyond words. Fortune smiled upon them; Ernest was earning money, and, if he had chosen, there were plenty of people who would gladly have come to his table to congratulate him upon his success and to flatter his wife, closing their eyes to what was lacking in their union. But Marguerite did not choose to go into society; she insisted that a few real friends are much to be preferred to parties where women tear one another to pieces and men deceive one another. She spoke of the world as if she were familiar with it. “This society in which you wish me to mingle,” she said to Ernest, “would think that it did me much honor by receiving me; indeed many women would blush to speak to me. ‘She is not married,’ they would say to one another as they eyed me contemptuously. And I, my dear, do not feel disposed to put up with such a greeting. In the bottom of my heart I feel quite as worthy of esteem as any of those ladies; for I would give my blood and my life for you; and there is more than one of them who would not do as much for her husband.”