Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 4.djvu/23

 thought him very pleasant because he danced with her at all the balls, and there was never a lack of good reasons to persuade Julie's mother to stay late, to go to the theatre, or to the Bois de Boulogne. Finally Julie thought him a hero because he had fought two or three duels with honour. But what completed the triumph of Chaverny was his description of a certain carriage which he would have built after a plan of his own, and in which he himself would take Julie for a drive after she had consented to give him her hand.

At the end of several months of married life all Chaverny's good qualities had greatly decreased in merit. He no longer danced with his wife—needless to say. His amusing stories had all been told three or four times. Now he complained that balls were kept up far too long. He yawned at the theatre and objected to the custom of dressing for dinner as being a perfect nuisance. His chief fault was laziness. If he made an effort to make himself pleasing to his wife he might perhaps have succeeded; but any kind of restraint seemed to him perfect torture; a view which he held in common with nearly all stout people. Society bored him because in it we are cordially received only in proportion as we exert ourselves to be agreeable. Coarse pleasures