you are able to place yourself above all ordinary laws, received
ideas, adopted conventions, and acknowledged prejudices; in short, you
can grasp the profits of a situation in which I should find nothing
but ill-luck. Your cool, systematic, possibly true deductions are, to
the eyes of the masses, shockingly immoral. I belong to the masses. I
must play my game of life according to the rules of the society in
which I am forced to live. While putting yourself above all human
things on peaks of ice, you still have feelings; but as for me, I
should freeze to death. The life of that great majority, to which I
belong in my commonplace way, is made up of emotions of which I now
have need. Often a man coquets with a dozen women and obtains none.
Then, whatever be his strength, his cleverness, his knowledge of the
world, he undergoes convulsions, in which he is crushed as between two
gates. For my part, I like the peaceful chances and changes of life; I
want that wholesome existence in which we find a woman always at our
side."

"A trifle indecorous, your marriage!" exclaimed de Marsay.

Paul was not to be put out of countenance, and continued: "Laugh if
you like; I shall feel myself a happy man when my valet enters my room
in the morning and says: 'Madame is awaiting monsieur for breakfast';
happier still at night, when I return to find a heart--"

"Altogether indecorous, my dear Paul. You are not yet moral enough to
marry."

"--a heart in which to confide my interests and my secrets. I wish to
live in such close union with a woman that our affection shall not
depend upon a yes or a no, or be open to the disillusions of love. In