remarkable young women of our day.

Marie-Angelique felt for Felix precisely the feelings with which Felix
desired to inspire her,--true friendship, sincere gratitude, and a
fraternal love, in which was mingled, at certain times, a noble and
dignified tenderness, such as tenderness between husband and wife
ought to be. She was a mother, and a good mother. Felix had therefore
attached himself to his young wife by every bond without any
appearance of garroting her,--relying for his happiness on the charms
of habit.

None but men trained in the school of life--men who have gone round
the circle of disillusionment, political and amorous--are capable of
following out a course like this. Felix, however, found in his work
the same pleasure that painters, writers, architects take in their
creations. He doubly enjoyed both the work and its fruition as he
admired his wife, so artless, yet so well-informed, witty, but
natural, lovable and chaste, a girl, and yet a mother, perfectly free,
though bound by the chains of righteousness. The history of all good
homes is that of prosperous peoples; it can be written in two lines,
and has in it nothing for literature. So, as happiness is only
explicable to and by itself, these four years furnish nothing to
relate which was not as tender as the soft outlines of eternal
cherubs, as insipid, alas! as manna, and about as amusing as the tale
of "Astrea."

In 1833, this edifice of happiness, so carefully erected by Felix de
Vandenesse, began to crumble, weakened at its base without his
knowledge. The heart of a woman of twenty-five is no longer that of a
girl of eighteen, any more than the heart of a woman of forty is that