Marriage is beautiful for lovers and useful for saints.
Besides saints and lovers there are a great many ordinary minds and placid hearts that do not know love and cannot attain to sanctity.
Marriage is the supreme aim of love. When love has left it, or never entered it, sacrifice remains. This is very well for those who understand sacrifice. The latter presupposes a measure of heart and a degree of intelligence which are not frequently to be met with.
For sacrifice there are compensations which the vulgar mind can appreciate. The approbation of the world, the routine sweetness of custom, a feeble, tranquil, and sensible devotion that is not bent on rapturous exaltation, or money, that is to say baubles, dress, luxury—in short, a thousand little things which make one forget that one is deprived of happiness.
The following extracts give us some glimpses which enable us to realise the situation:—
I left rather sad. * said hard things to me, having been told by a Madame *** that I was wrong in making excursions without my husband. I do not think that this is the case, seeing that my husband goes first, and I go where he intends to go.
My husband is one of the most intrepid of men. He goes everywhere, and I follow him. He turns round and rebukes me. He says that I affect singularity. I'll be hanged if I think of it. I turn round, and I see Zoe following me. I tell her that she affects singularity. My husband is angry because Zoe laughs.
…We quickly leave the guides and the caravan behind us. We ride over the most fantastic roads at a gallop. Zoe is mad with courage. This intoxicates me, and I at once am her equal.
In addition to the above, we must read a remark suggested by certain entries in the diary:—
Aimee was an accomplished person of an exquisite distinction. She loved everything that in any way is elegant and ornate in society: names, manners, talents, titles. Madcap as I assuredly was, I looked upon all this as vanity, and went in quest of intimacy and simplicity combined with poesy. Thanks to God, I found them in Zoe, who was really a person of merit, and, moreover, a woman with a heart as eager for affection as my own.