Still remember, that whoever has arranged his life independently of custom runs a peculiar risk in marriage. Women are by nature far more subservient to custom than we are, more than we can easily conceive. The danger of marriage, for a person of your tastes, is that a woman entering your house might enter it as the representative of that minutely-interfering authority which you continually ignore. And let us never forget that a perfect obedience to custom requires great sacrifices of time and money that you might not be disposed to make, and which certainly would interfere with study. You value and enjoy your solitude, well knowing how great a thing it is to be master of all your hours. It is difficult to conciliate solitude, or even a wise and suitable selection of acquaintances, with the semi-publicity of marriage. Heads of families receive many persons in their houses whom they would never have invited, and from whose society they derive little pleasure and no profit. De Sénancour had plans of studious retirement, and hoped that the "_douce intimité_" of marriage might be compatible with these cherished projects. But marriage, he found, drew him into the circle of ordinary provincial life, and he always suffered from its influences. You are necessarily an eccentric. In the neighborhood where you live it is an eccentricity to study, for nobody but you studies anything. A man so situated is fortunate when this feeling of eccentricity is alleviated, and unfortunate when it is increased. A wife would certainly do one or the other. Married to a very superior woman, able to understand the devotion to intellectual aims, you would be much relieved of the painful consciousness of eccentricity; but a woman of less capacity would intensify it.