Since then, the poor little creatures have missed many other chances. However, this has in no way spoilt the happiness of the singular household. On the contrary, the more they live, the merrier they are. Last winter they changed quarters three times, were sold up once, and notwithstanding all this, gave two large fancy balls!
FRAGMENT OF A WOMAN'S LETTER FOUND IN THE RUE NOTRE-DAME-DES-CHAMPS
... What it has cost me to marry an artist! Oh, my dear! if I had known! but young girls have singular ideas about so many things. Just imagine that at the Exhibition, when I read in the catalogue the addresses of far-away quiet streets at the further end of Paris, I pictured to myself peaceable, stay-at-home lives, devoted to work and the family circle, and I said to myself (feeling beforehand a certainty that I should be dreadfully jealous), "That is the sort of husband to suit me. He will always be with me. We shall spend our days together; he at his picture or sculpture, while I read or sew beside him, in the concentrated light of the studio." Poor dear innocent! I had not the faintest idea then what a studio really was, nor of the singular creatures one meets there. Never, in gazing at those statues of bold undressed goddesses had the idea occurred to me that there were women daring enough to—and that even I myself——. Otherwise, I can assure you I should never have married a sculptor. No, indeed, most decidedly not! I must own, they were all against this marriage at home; notwithstanding my husband's fortune, his already famous name, and the fine house he was having built for us two. It was I alone who would have it so. He was so elegant, so charming, so eager. I thought, however, he meddled a little too much about my dress, and the arrangement of my hair: "Do your hair like this; so," and he would amuse himself by placing a flower in the midst of my curls with far greater skill than any one of our milliners. So much experience in a man was alarming, wasn't it? I ought to have distrusted him. Well, you will see. Listen.