Had he full use of his mental faculties, and did he long for love and
devotion, I would try and dissuade Elise from the marriage, but solely
on _his_ account, not on hers.
The young man you mention, as your choice of a suitor for the hand of
your sister, might better go up in a balloon to seek for Eutopia than to
expect happiness as her husband. He has a sweet, gentle, loving nature,
a taste for quiet home joys, fondness for children, and he has two
thousand a year, with small prospects of more in the near future.
He should marry a modest, domestic girl, with tastes similar to his own,
and with no overweening ambitions. Elise would simply drive him mad in a
year's time, with her restless discontent, her extravagance, and her
desire for the expensive pleasures of earth. It is useless to reason
with her, or to expect her to model her ideas to suit her circumstances.
Inheritance and twenty-one years of wrong education must be taken into
consideration. What would mean happiness for many women would mean
misery for her. I can imagine no more dreadful destiny than to be tied
to a senile old man by a legal ceremony, even were I given his millions
in payment.
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