But Augustine was too sincerely religious not to take
fright at the tone of artists. At the first dinner Theodore gave, she
heard a young painter say, with the childlike lightness, which to her
was unintelligible, and which redeems a jest from the taint of
profanity, "But, madame, your Paradise cannot be more beautiful than
Raphael's Transfiguration!--Well, and I got tired of looking at that."
Thus Augustine came among this sparkling set in a spirit of distrust
which no one could fail to see. She was a restraint on their freedom.
Now an artist who feels restraint is pitiless; he stays away, or
laughs it to scorn. Madame Guillaume, among other absurdities, had an
excessive notion of the dignity she considered the prerogative of a
married woman; and Augustine, though she had often made fun of it,
could not help a slight imitation of her mother's primness. This
extreme propriety, which virtuous wives do not always avoid, suggested
a few epigrams in the form of sketches, in which the harmless jest was
in such good taste that Sommervieux could not take offence; and even
if they had been more severe, these pleasantries were after all only
reprisals from his friends. Still, nothing could seem a trifle to a
spirit so open as Theodore's to impressions from without. A coldness
insensibly crept over him, and inevitably spread. To attain conjugal
happiness we must climb a hill whose summit is a narrow ridge, close
to a steep and slippery descent: the painter's love was falling down
it.
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