sons; crossing the races is never thought of, and the brain inevitably
degenerates, so that in many country towns intellect is as rare as the
breed is hideous. Mankind becomes dwarfed in mind and body, for the
fatal principle of conformity of fortune governs every matrimonial
alliance. Men of talent, artists, superior brains--every bird of
brilliant plumage flies to Paris. The provincial woman, inferior in
herself, is also inferior through her husband. How is she to live
happy under this crushing twofold consciousness?

But there is a third and terrible element besides her congenital and
conjugal inferiority which contributes to make the figure arid and
gloomy; to reduce it, narrow it, distort it fatally. Is not one of the
most flattering unctions a woman can lay to her soul the assurance of
being something in the existence of a superior man, chosen by herself,
wittingly, as if to have some revenge on marriage, wherein her tastes
were so little consulted? But if in the country the husbands are
inferior beings, the bachelors are no less so. When a provincial wife
commits her "little sin," she falls in love with some so-called
handsome native, some indigenous dandy, a youth who wears gloves and
is supposed to ride well; but she knows at the bottom of her soul that
her fancy is in pursuit of the commonplace, more or less well dressed.
Dinah was preserved from this danger by the idea impressed upon her of
her own superiority. Even if she had not been as carefully guarded in
her early married life as she was by her mother, whose presence never
weighed upon her till the day when she wanted to be rid of it, her
pride, and her high sense of her own destinies, would have protected
her. Flattered as she was to find herself surrounded by admirers, she
saw no lover among them. No man here realized the poetical ideal which
she and Anna Grossetete had been wont to sketch. When, stirred by the
involuntary temptations suggested by the homage she received, she