In the evening, after a
splendid ball, followed by one of those substantial suppers of which
the memory is dying out in the present generation, Monsieur and Madame
Guillaume remained in a fine house belonging to them in the Rue du
Colombier, where the wedding had been held; Monsieur and Madame Lebas
returned in their fly to the old home in the Rue Saint-Denis, to steer
the good ship Cat and Racket. The artist, intoxicated with happiness,
carried off his beloved Augustine, and eagerly lifting her out of
their carriage when it reached the Rue des Trois-Freres, led her to an
apartment embellished by all the arts.
The fever of passion which possessed Theodore made a year fly over the
young couple without a single cloud to dim the blue sky under which
they lived. Life did not hang heavy on the lovers' hands. Theodore
lavished on every day inexhaustible _fioriture_ of enjoyment, and he
delighted to vary the transports of passion by the soft languor of
those hours of repose when souls soar so high that they seem to have
forgotten all bodily union. Augustine was too happy for reflection;
she floated on an undulating tide of rapture; she thought she could
not do enough by abandoning herself to sanctioned and sacred married
love; simple and artless, she had no coquetry, no reserves, none of
the dominion which a worldly-minded girl acquires over her husband by
ingenious caprice; she loved too well to calculate for the future, and
never imagined that so exquisite a life could come to an end.
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