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Updated: May 22, 2025
As a father-in-law of the Marquis of Farandal, whose ancestors had been the faithful and chosen familiars of the royal house of France, he might rise to the first rank.
As they entered, the painter observed, beside his aunt, the Marquis de Farandal, attentive and smiling, and extending his hand to receive the parasols and wraps of the Countess and her daughter. He felt again so much displeasure that he suddenly desired to say rude and irritating things.
That was enough, and, the man of fashion being convinced, as well as the Inspector of Fine Arts, he began to talk wisely of the social footing on which the Marquise de Farandal would stand in French society. Bertin listened to him, and fancied Annette in a large salon full of light, surrounded by men and women. This vision, too, made him jealous. They were now going up the Boulevard Malesherbes.
He guessed the reason for his friend's haste in having it finished soon; he understood that in the shortest time possible she would give her daughter to Farandal. He could not help it. He could neither prevent, nor modify, nor delay this frightful thing.
It was not at all the same thing: Monsieur de Farandal admired her, Olivier Bertin loved! She believed this at least during her hours of torture; then, in quieter moments she still hoped that she had deceived herself. Oh, often she could hardly restrain herself from questioning him when she was alone with him, praying, entreating him to speak, to confess all, to hide nothing!
Besides, Annette never spoke of Monsieur de Farandal before him. Was this because of a sort of instinctive modesty, or was it perhaps from one of those secret intuitions of the feminine heart which enable them to foretell that of which they are ignorant?
"He is growing old quite fast, indeed. I believe, however, that bachelors usually go to pieces suddenly. Their breaking-up comes more abruptly than ours. He really is very much changed." "Ah, yes!" sighed the Countess. Farandal suddenly stopped his whispering to Annette to say: "The Figaro has a very disagreeable article about him this morning."
Musadieu, surprised and embarrassed, defended himself, tried to explain and to excuse himself. "Allow me to say," he remarked at last, "that I heard this story just before I came here, in the drawing-room of the Duchesse de Mortemain." "Who told it to you? A woman, no doubt," said Bertin. "No, not at all; it was the Marquis de Farandal."
But no reasoning could efface that impression of uneasiness and discontent which had seized him when he had beheld Farandal talking and smiling like an accepted suitor, caressing with his glances the fair face of the young girl.
And he went away quickly in order to avoid shaking hands with Farandal, who was approaching slowly in making the rounds of the Hammam. He remained barely a quarter of an hour in the large quiet resting-room, in the center of a row of cells containing the beds, with a parterre of African plants and a little fountain in the center.
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