with a rather handsome woman, belonging to the lower classes, without
education or manners, whom he carefully concealed from every eye.
Michel Chrestien attributed to men of genius the power of transforming
the most massive creatures into sylphs, fools into clever women,
peasants into countesses; the more accomplished a woman was, the more
she lost her value in their eyes, for, according to Michel, their
imagination had the less to do. In his opinion love, a mere matter of
the senses to inferior beings, was to great souls the most immense of
all moral creations and the most binding. To justify d'Arthez, he
instanced the example of Raffaele and the Fornarina. He might have
offered himself as an instance for this theory, he who had seen an
angel in the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse. This strange fancy of d'Arthez
might, however, be explained in other ways; perhaps he had despaired
of meeting here below with a woman who answered to that delightful
vision which all men of intellect dream of and cherish; perhaps his
heart was too sensitive, too delicate, to yield itself to a woman of
society; perhaps he thought best to let nature have her way, and keep
his illusions by cultivating his ideal; perhaps he had laid aside love
as being incompatible with his work and the regularity of a monastic
life which love would have wholly upset.

For several months past d'Arthez had been subjected to the jests and
satire of Blondet and Rastignac, who reproached him with knowing
neither the world nor women. According to them, his authorship was
sufficiently advanced, and his works numerous enough, to allow him a
few distractions; he had a fine fortune, and here he was living like a
student; he enjoyed nothing,--neither his money nor his fame; he was
ignorant of the exquisite enjoyments of the noble and delicate love
which well-born and well-bred women could inspire and feel; he knew
nothing of the charming refinements of language, nothing of the proofs