Married for
the last seven years to the Marquis de Listomere, one of those
deputies who expect a peerage, she may also consider that such conduct
will promote the ambitions of her family. Some women are reserving
their opinion of her until the moment when Monsieur de Listomere
becomes a peer of France, when she herself will be thirty-six years of
age,--a period of life when most women discover that they are the
dupes of social laws.
The marquis is a rather insignificant man. He stands well at court;
his good qualities are as negative as his defects; the former can no
more make him a reputation for virtue than the latter can give him the
sort of glamor cast by vice. As deputy, he never speaks, but he votes
RIGHT. He behaves in his own home as he does in the Chamber.
Consequently, he is held to be one of the best husbands in France.
Though not susceptible of lively interest, he never scolds, unless, to
be sure, he is kept waiting. His friends have named him "dull
weather,"--aptly enough, for there is neither clear light nor total
darkness about him. He is like all the ministers who have succeeded
one another in France since the Charter. A woman with principles could
not have fallen into better hands. It is certainly a great thing for a
virtuous woman to have married a man incapable of follies.
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