Felix might still rank among the handsomest and most agreeable men in Paris.

He was originally commended to many women by one of the noblest creatures of our epoch, Madame de Mortsauf, who had died, it was said, out of love and grief for him; but he was specially trained for social life by the handsome and well-known Lady Dudley.
In the eyes of many Parisian women, Felix, a sort of hero of romance, owed much of his success to the evil that was said of him.

Madame de Manerville had closed the list of his amorous adventures; and perhaps her dismissal had something to do with his frame of mind.

At any rate, without being in any way a Don Juan, he had gathered in the world of love as many disenchantments as he had met with in the world of politics.

That ideal of womanhood and of passion, the type of which--perhaps to his sorrow--had lighted and governed his dawn of life, he despaired of ever finding again.
At thirty years of age, Comte Felix determined to put an end to the burden of his various felicities by marriage.