LOVE.
In fact Maurice for some time had experienced a strange medley of happiness and misery. It is always thus at the commencement of the tender passion. His daily occupation at the section Lepelletier, his evening visits to the old Rue Saint Jacques, and some occasional visits to the club of the Thermopyles, filled up his days.
He did not deceive himself. He well knew that to see Geneviève daily was to imbibe large draughts of a hopeless love.
Geneviève was a woman of retired manners and pleasing appearance, who would frankly tender her hand to a friend, and would innocently approach his face with her lips, with the confidence of a sister, and the ignorance of a vestal before whom the words of love appear as blasphemy.
Thus in the purest dreams that the first style of Raphael has traced upon the canvas is a Madonna with smiling lips, chaste eyes, and heavenly expression. This creation of the divine pupil of Perugino may help us to portray the likeness of Geneviève.
In the midst of flowers she imbibed their freshness and perfume; isolated from the occupation of her husband, and from her husband himself, she appeared to Maurice each time he saw her like a living enigma, of which he could not divine the meaning, and dared not ask it.
One evening when, as usual, he had remained alone with her, they were both seated at the same window by which he had entered, a few nights since, with so little ceremony; the perfume of the lilacs in full bloom floated upon the soft breeze that had succeeded the radiant sunset. After a long silence, Maurice, having during this silence followed the intelligent and holy eye of Geneviève as she watched the appearance of the stars in the azure vault of heaven, ventured to inquire concerning the great disparity between herself and husband. She so young, and he already past the middle age; she so refined in manner, while everything around announced him a man of inferior birth and education; she so sublime in her thoughts and aspirations, while her husband had not an idea beyond his manufactory.
"Here, at the abode of a master-tanner, are harp, piano, and drawings, which you acknowledge to be your own. How is it that here I meet with aristocracy which though I detest it in others, I adore in you?"
Geneviève fixed upon Maurice a look full of candor.