How do women of her
class contrive to make a man marry them after seven or eight years of
intimacy? What springs do they touch? What machinery do they set in
motion? But, however comical such domestic dramas may be, we are not
now concerned with them. Du Bruel was secretly married; the thing was
done.
"Cursy before his marriage was supposed to be a jolly companion; now
and again he stayed out all night, and to some extent led the life of
a Bohemian; he would unbend at a supper-party. He went out to all
appearance to a rehearsal at the Opera-Comique, and found himself in
some unaccountable way at Dieppe, or Baden, or Saint-Germain; he gave
dinners, led the Titanic thriftless life of artists, journalists, and
writers; levied his tribute on all the greenrooms of Paris; and, in
short, was one of us. Finot, Lousteau, du Tillet, Desroches, Bixiou,
Blondet, Couture, and des Lupeaulx tolerated him in spite of his
pedantic manner and ponderous official attitude. But once married,
Tullia made a slave of du Bruel. There was no help for it. He was in
love with Tullia, poor devil.
"'Tullia' (so he said) 'had left the stage to be his alone, to be a
good and charming wife.
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