Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/78

 money would restore him to the lost power of his ancestors, and save a mighty and stainless name from falling into that paralysis of poverty and that dust of obscurity, which are, sooner or later, its utter extinction. She seemed cast across his path by a caress of Fortune, from which it would be madness to turn aside. True, he had a wholly different ideal for his wife; he disliked those world-famous élégantes; he disliked women who smoked, and knew their Paris as thoroughly as Houssaye or Dumas; he disliked the extravagant, artificial, empty, frivolous life they led; their endless chase after new excitements, and their insatiable appetite for frissons nouveaux; he disliked their literature, their habits, their cynicism, their ennui, their sensuality, and their dissipations; he knew them well, and disliked them in all things; what he desired in his wife were natural emotions, unworn innocence, serenity, simplicity, and freshness of enjoyment; though he was of the world, he did not care very much for it; he had a meditative, imaginative temperament, and the whirl of modern society was soon wearisome to him; on the other