During the days following he kept urging Olivier to go and propose his
suit to Jacqueline's parents. Olivier dared not, dreading the refusal
which he anticipated. Christophe also insisted on his setting about
finding work, for even supposing the Langeais accepted him, he could not
take Jacqueline's fortune unless he were himself in a position to earn
his living. Olivier was of the same opinion, though he did not share his
violent and rather comic distrust of wealthy marriages. It was a rooted
idea in Christophe's mind that riches are death to the soul. It was on
the tip of his tongue to quote the saying of a wise beggar to a rich
lady who was worried in her mind about the next life:

"What, madame, you have millions, and you want to have an immortal soul
into the bargain?"

"Beware of women," he would say to Olivier--half in jest, half in
earnest--"beware of women, but be twenty times more wary of rich women.
Women love art, perhaps, but they strangle the artist. Rich women poison
both art and artists. Wealth is a disease. And women are more
susceptible to it than men. Every rich man is an abnormal being.... You
laugh? You don't take me seriously? Look you: does a rich man know what
life is? Does he keep himself in touch with the raw realities of life?
Does he feel on his face the stinging breath of poverty, the smell of
the bread that he must earn, of the earth that he must dig? Can he
understand, does he even see people and things as they are?... When I
was a little boy I was once or twice taken for a drive in the Grand
Duke's landau. We drove through fields in which I knew every blade of
grass, through woods that I adored, where I used to run wild all by
myself. Well: I saw nothing at all. The whole country had become as
stiff and starched as the idiots with whom I was driving. Between the