smothered under his big moustache; then he roused himself a little and explained his ideas of machinery.  He was an inventor.  He would draw a pencil from his pocket and make drawings on my father’s designs.  He spoiled in that way two or three studies a week.  He liked my father a great deal, and promised works and honors to him which never came.  The Emperor was kind, but he had no influence, as mamma said.  At that time I was a little boy.  Since then a vague sympathy has remained in me for that man, who was lacking in genius, but whose mind was affectionate and beautiful, and who carried through great adventures a simple courage and a gentle fatalism.  Then he is sympathetic to me because he has been combated and insulted by people who were eager to take his place, and who had not, as he had, in the depths of their souls, a love for the people.  We have seen them in power since then.  Heavens, how ugly they are!  Senator Loyer, for instance, who at your house, in the smoking-room, filled his pockets with cigars, and invited me to do likewise.  That Loyer is a bad man, harsh to the unfortunate, to the weak, and to the humble.  And Garain, don’t you think his mind is disgusting?  Do you remember the first time I dined at your house and we talked of Napoleon?  Your hair, twisted above your neck, and shot through by a diamond arrow, was adorable.  Paul Vence said subtle things.  Garain did not understand.  You asked for my opinion.”

“It was to make you shine.  I was already conceited for you.”

“Oh, I never could say a single phrase before people who are so serious.  Yet I had a great desire to say that Napoleon III pleased me more than Napoleon I; that I thought him more touching; but perhaps that idea would have produced a bad effect.  But I am not so destitute of talent as to care about politics.”

He looked around the room, and at the furniture with familiar tenderness.  He opened a drawer: 

“Here are mamma’s eye-glasses.  How she searched for these eye-glasses!  Now I will show you my room.  If it is not in order you must excuse Madame Fusellier, who is trained to respect my disorder.”

The curtains at the windows were down.  He did not lift them.  After an hour she drew back the red satin draperies; rays of light dazzled her eyes and fell on her floating hair.  She looked for a mirror and found only a looking-glass of Venice, dull in its wide ebony border.  Rising on the tips of her toes to see herself in it, she said: 

“Is that sombre and far-away spectre I?  The women who have looked at themselves in this glass can not have complimented you on it.”

As she was taking pins from the table she noticed a little bronze figure which she had not yet seen.  It was an old Italian work of Flemish taste:  a nude woman, with short legs and heavy stomach, who apparently ran with an arm extended.  She thought the figure had a droll air.  She asked what she was doing.