"
"Ah, I know the one thing wanting for your happiness," cried Wolf.
"Well?"
"A wife."
"Oh! you have no right to preach marriage, since you have remained a
bachelor yourself."
"I am three years younger than you."
"But you are thirty-seven."
"True," replied Wolf, and for a time remained silent and thoughtful.
Then he continued:
"What would you have? Fate destines us to live in a foreign country,
without family intercourse, far from the circle with which one is
united by early memories and the first affections of the heart; we do
not definitely seek, Fate does not help us find. We adjust our lives
to habits which really leave no room for a wife, and so the years flit
by till some day we discover that we are bachelors and that it is too
late to change."
"That is exactly my case; I did not suppose it was yours also."
"With me," replied Wolf, "something else is added. Recollections which
make marriage rather dreaded than desired. We know how we have been
loved, and fear that we shall not find such love again. We compare in
advance a virtuous wife with the woman whose distant image is somewhat
transfigured by the past, and confess that we have been completely
spoiled for the part of a husband content to sit phlegmatically in the
chimney corner.
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