"Not over-interested in domestic matters, it was true; but then neither was he. In a novel, all his life's anxieties, his mixture of strength and weakness, his potential for hysteria--all would have been swirled away in a vortex of love leading to the blissful calm of marriage. But one of life's many disappointments was that it was never a novel, not by Maupassant or anyone else. Well, perhaps a short satirical tale by Gogol" (p.38)"