was unintelligible, and which redeems a jest from the taint of
profanity, "But, madame, your Paradise cannot be more beautiful than
Raphael's Transfiguration!--Well, and I got tired of looking at that."

Thus Augustine came among this sparkling set in a spirit of distrust
which no one could fail to see. She was a restraint on their freedom.
Now an artist who feels restraint is pitiless; he stays away, or
laughs it to scorn. Madame Guillaume, among other absurdities, had an
excessive notion of the dignity she considered the prerogative of a
married woman; and Augustine, though she had often made fun of it,
could not help a slight imitation of her mother's primness. This
extreme propriety, which virtuous wives do not always avoid, suggested
a few epigrams in the form of sketches, in which the harmless jest was
in such good taste that Sommervieux could not take offence; and even
if they had been more severe, these pleasantries were after all only
reprisals from his friends. Still, nothing could seem a trifle to a
spirit so open as Theodore's to impressions from without. A coldness
insensibly crept over him, and inevitably spread. To attain conjugal
happiness we must climb a hill whose summit is a narrow ridge, close
to a steep and slippery descent: the painter's love was falling down
it. He regarded his wife as incapable of appreciating the moral
considerations which justified him in his own eyes for his singular
behavior to her, and believed himself quite innocent in hiding from
her thoughts she could not enter into, and peccadilloes outside the
jurisdiction of a _bourgeois_ conscience. Augustine wrapped herself in
sullen and silent grief. These unconfessed feelings placed a shroud
between the husband and wife which could not fail to grow thicker day
by day. Though her husband never failed in consideration for her,
Augustine could not help trembling as she saw that he kept for the
outer world those treasures of wit and grace that he formerly would