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"No; I should like better to have it this very evening, so that I may admire it while I am going to bed," said Musadieu. Nothing could keep him, and Olivier Bertin found himself again alone in his house, that prison of his memories and his painful agitation.
Musadieu felt this chilly current freezing his flow of ideas; and, without asking himself the reason, he felt a sudden desire to rise and depart. Bertin, as a matter of discretion, followed his example. The two men passed through both drawing-rooms together, followed by the Countess, who talked to the painter all the while.
Through continually meeting, the two men, becoming accustomed to each other, finally became excellent friends. When Bertin entered, on Friday evening, the house of his friend, where he was to dine in honor of the return of Antoinette de Guilleroy, he found in the little Louis XV salon only Monsieur de Musadieu, who had just arrived.
I cannot understand how men can admire your skeletons. In my time they demanded more!" She subsided amid the smiles of the company, but added, turning to Annette: "Look at your mamma, little one; she does very well; she has attained the happy medium imitate her." They passed into the dining-room. After they were seated, Musadieu resumed the discussion.
The Count approached the portable table, where was also an assortment of syrups, liqueurs, and glasses; he mixed himself a drink, then discreetly disappeared into the next room. Bertin found himself again facing Musadieu, and felt once more the sudden desire to thrust outside this bore, who, now put on his mettle, talked at great length, told stories, repeated jests, and made some himself.
Musadieu now appeared, having heard of Madame de Guilleroy's return, as he wished to be one of the first to offer her the "homage of his sorrowful sympathy." He interrupted his first speech on perceiving the young girl standing against the frame, illumined by the same ray of light, appearing like the living sister of the painting.
M. de Guilleroy concluded in a tone of profound conviction: "He is a great man, a very great man, who desires peace, but who has faith only in menaces and violent means as the way to obtain it. In short, gentlemen, a great barbarian." "He that wishes the end must take the means," M. de Musadieu replied.
The Duchess explained the meeting of her nephew and the departure of Musadieu, who had been carried off by the Minister of the Fine Arts, and Bertin, at the thought that this insipidly good-looking Marquis might marry Annette, that he had come there only to see her, and that he regarded her already as destined to share his bed, unnerved and revolted him, as if some one had ignored his own rights sacred and mysterious rights.
According to Musadieu, the Corbelles, and the Comte de Guilleroy, the Countess and her daughter resembled each other only in coloring, in the hair, and above all in the eyes, which were exactly alike, both showing tiny black points, like minute drops of ink, on the blue iris. But it was their opinion that when the young girl should have become a woman they would no longer resemble each other.
It was at her house that the painter and the Countess had happened to meet. Musadieu approached the group. "Has the Duchess been to see the exposition of the Intemperates?" he inquired. "No; what is that?" "A group of new artists, impressionists in a state of intoxication. Two of them are very fine." The great lady murmured, with disdain: "I do not like the jests of those gentlemen."
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