it shows a kind of semi-concession which is almost as unsatisfactory to the hearer and leaves him dissatisfied.  Nothing brings more profit in the commerce of society than the small change of attention.  He that heareth let him hear, is not only a gospel precept, it is an excellent speculation; follow it, and all will be forgiven you, even vice.  Canalis took a great deal of trouble in his anxiety to please Modeste; but though he was compliant enough with her, he fell back into his natural self with the others.

Modeste, pitiless for the ten martyrs she was making, begged Canalis to read some of his poems; she wanted, she said, a specimen of his gift for reading, of which she had heard so much.  Canalis took the volume which she gave him, and cooed (for that is the proper word) a poem which is generally considered his finest,—­an imitation of Moore’s “Loves of the Angels,” entitled “Vitalis,” which Monsieur and Madame Dumay, Madame Latournelle, and Gobenheim welcomed with a few yawns.

“If you are a good whist-player, monsieur,” said Gobenheim, flourishing five cards held like a fan, “I must say I have never met a man as accomplished as you.”

The remark raised a laugh, for it was the translation of everybody’s thought.

“I play it sufficiently well to live in the provinces for the rest of my days,” replied Canalis.  “That, I think, is enough, and more than enough literature and conversation for whist-players,” he added, throwing the volume impatiently on a table.

This little incident serves to show what dangers environ a drawing-room hero when he steps, like Canalis, out of his sphere; he is like the favorite actor of a second-rate audience, whose talent is lost when he leaves his own boards and steps upon those of an upper-class theatre.

CHAPTER XXI

MODESTE PLAYS HER PART

The game opened with the baron and the duke, Gobenheim and Latournelle as partners.  Modeste took a seat near the poet, to Ernest’s deep disappointment; he watched the face of the wayward girl, and marked the progress of the fascination which Canalis exerted over her.  La Briere had not the gift of seduction which Melchior possessed.  Nature frequently denies it to true hearts, who are, as a rule, timid.  This gift demands fearlessness, an alacrity of ways and means that might be called the trapeze of the mind; a little mimicry goes with it; in fact there is always, morally speaking, something of the comedian in a poet.  There is a vast difference between expressing sentiments we do not feel, though we may imagine all their variations, and feigning to feel them when bidding for success on the theatre of private life.  And yet, though the necessary hypocrisy of a man of the world may have gangrened a poet, he ends by carrying the faculties of his talent into the expression of any required sentiment, just as a great man doomed to solitude ends by infusing his heart into his mind.