A large proportion of the farmers,
corn-factors, dairy-keepers, and market-gardeners in the neighborhood
of Paris, dream of the glories of the desk for their daughters, and
look upon a shopkeeper, a jeweler, or a money-changer as a son-in-law
after their own heart, in preference to a notary or an attorney, whose
superior social position is a ground of suspicion; they are afraid of
being scorned in the future by these citizen bigwigs.
Madame Crevel, ugly, vulgar, and silly, had given her husband no
pleasures but those of paternity; she died young. Her libertine
husband, fettered at the beginning of his commercial career by the
necessity for working, and held in thrall by want of money, had led
the life of Tantalus. Thrown in--as he phrased it--with the most
elegant women in Paris, he let them out of the shop with servile
homage, while admiring their grace, their way of wearing the fashions,
and all the nameless charms of what is called breeding. To rise to the
level of one of these fairies of the drawing-room was a desire formed
in his youth, but buried in the depths of his heart. Thus to win the
favors of Madame Marneffe was to him not merely the realization of his
chimera, but, as has been shown, a point of pride, of vanity, of
self-satisfaction.
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