"I am improving wonderfully in French. That's a good thing, Natalie, a very good thing." He was quite solemn on this point.
"An excellent thing," she replied, somewhat surprised at the gravity with which he treated a matter of no great importance. "I wish, Leonard, that my affairs were concluded. I am sure you are being kept here against your wish."
"Whatever my wish, your affairs ought to come first. Let us be content that, if they do drag, I can employ the time in self-improvement."
Thus, in the praiseworthy pursuit of improvement Leonard spent much of his time. He was by no means neglectful of his wife, whose attendance, with the Marquise, was much in demand in official bureaus, and who encouraged his intimacy with the lieutenant, whom she no longer found unendurable, and whose amiable and forgiving conduct had won her heart. "They are not rich, you know," she said. "Entertain the little man all you can; the Marquise was very kind to me." An injunction which afforded another reason why it was incumbent on Leonard to procure the Marquis the distractions that he loved, in so far as purse and principle permitted, and these were found elastic.
Because, as he was forced to admit when arguing with the Marquis, a reasonable elasticity is not only proper, but essential to culture.
"Mon bon," observed the lieutenant, "the view you advance is narrow. The ballet, as a favorite spectacle of the people, should be studied by every student of morals. You, as a preacher——"
Leonard laughed. "I'm not a preacher; I'm an instructor in a college of divinity."
"Eh bien! The greater reason. How shall one teach the good, knowing not the evil? Du reste, are they evil, ces belles jambes of Coralie? They are fine creations, of pure nature; there is no padding."
"You will be my guest, if we go?"
"Since you insist; also to a petit souper, a parti carré, with Aimée and Louise. Coralie! Sapristi, no! Her maw is insatiable; the little ones are easily pleased."