Of course there can be nothing of love, or affection, or even esteem in such marriages. Monsieur wants Madame to be handsome and accomplished, precisely as he wants a handsome horse--it pleases his eye and gratifies his tastes--but the main point after all is the _dot_. He has that additional income to live upon. Madame desires Monsieur to be likewise prepossessing, for she wants the world to believe that she married something beside the title of Madame, though all the world knows better. Each wants the other to be amiable, for even living separate, as they do, they are necessarily under one roof, and bad temper on either side would make things uncomfortable. Above all, they want no jealousy or inquisitiveness. Each wants to be let alone; each desires to follow the bent of his or her inclination, undisturbed and unmolested. And they get up, doubtless, some sort of an esteem for each other, which may in time ripen into something like what outside barbarians call love. But that occurs, probably, after one of them is dead, provided the survivor is too old to marry again. It looks well for a widow of fifty or sixty to revere the memory of her dear departed, and they generally do it, no matter on what terms they lived. [Illustration: THE ARC DU CARROUSEL.] Of course they have children born to them, for there must be heirs to the estate. Madame loves them very much, or appears to, but she sees very little of them. She puts them out to nurse at once. Children are tiresome and wearying to a woman whose day is divided into so much for dressing, so much for riding, so much for eating, and so much for balls or opera. She sees them and admires them, and when they are old enough, marries them off. The father is pleased to see that Henri is growing into a fine boy, or Marie into a fine girl, but he has his business and pleasures to attend to, and besides, there is invariably some woman, somewhere in Paris, that he does love, and she has children also. And so the children grow up, Monsieuring their father and Madaming their mother till they escape from under the paternal and maternal charge, only to go and do the same things for themselves. [Sidenote: MARRIAGE IN LOW LIFE.] Curious notions "our lively neighbors, the Gauls," as Mr. Micawber says, have of domestic life. There is no such thing in Paris.