For a while he hoped that she would content herself as his helpmate and the genius of the hearth when a mother.
But maternity had nothing but thorns for her.

She chafed under the burden and her joy was indecent when the little boy died.

Until then he had believed that the path of duty was wide enough and lined sufficiently with flowers to gratify or at least pacify her.
But Cesarine was, like her aunt, a born dissolvent of society's vital elements.

Ruled by a strong hand, and removed from the pernicious influence of the vicious countess, her mother had never inculcated evil to her child; on the contrary, impressed by the lesson of Iza's career, she had perhaps been too Puritanic with Cesarine, whose flight from home at an early age, was like the spring of a deer through a gap in a fence.
Cesarine, wherever placed, sapped morality, faith, labor and the family ties.
In the new country she feared at first that she had but exchanged parental despotism for marital tyranny.

But soon she perceived that nothing was changed that would affect her.