he took up his conjugal career with ample precaution; indulgence and
perfect confidence were the two anchors to which he moored it. Mothers
of families ought to seek such men for their daughters. A good mind
protects like a divinity; disenchantment is as keen-sighted as a
surgeon; experience as foreseeing as a mother. Those three qualities
are the cardinal virtues of a safe marriage. All that his past career
had taught to Felix de Vandenesse, the observations of a life that was
busy, literary, and thoughtful by turns, all his forces, in fact, were
now employed in making his wife happy; to that end he applied his
mind.

When Marie-Angelique left the maternal purgatory, she rose at once
into the conjugal paradise prepared for her by Felix, rue du Rocher,
in a house where all things were redolent of aristocracy, but where
the varnish of society did not impede the ease and "laisser-aller"
which young and loving hearts desire so much. From the start,
Marie-Angelique tasted all the sweets of material life to the very
utmost. For two years her husband made himself, as it were, her
purveyor. He explained to her, by degrees, and with great art, the
things of life; he initiated her slowly into the mysteries of the
highest society; he taught her the genealogies of noble families; he
showed her the world; he guided her taste in dress; he trained her to
converse; he took her from theatre to theatre, and made her study
literature and current history. This education he accomplished with
all the care of a lover, father, master, and husband; but he did it
soberly and discreetly; he managed both enjoyments and instructions
in such a manner as not to destroy the value of her religious ideas.
In short, he carried out his enterprise with the wisdom of a great
master. At the end of four years, he had the happiness of having
formed in the Comtesse de Vandenesse one of the most lovable and