His mother, warned by an
instinctive dread, made a slight effort to hold him back. Paris
terrified her now. She would have liked to take her child away to some
secluded corner in the South, to care for him with the Elder, both ill
with the disease of the great city. But he was the master. It was
impossible to resist the will of that man whom wealth had spoiled. She
helped him to dress, "made him handsome," as she laughingly said, and
watched him not without a certain pride as he left the house, superb,
revivified, almost recovered from the terrible prostration of the last
few days.

Jansoulet quickly remarked the sensation caused by his presence in the
theatre. Being accustomed to such exhibitions of curiosity, he usually
responded to them without the least embarrassment, with his kindly,
expansive smile; but this time the manifestation was unfriendly, almost
insulting.

"What!--is that he?"

"There he is!"

"What impudence!"

Such exclamations went up from the orchestra stalls, mingled with many
others. The seclusion and retirement in which he had taken refuge for
the past few days had left him in ignorance of the public exasperation
in his regard, the sermons, the dithyrambs with which the newspapers
were filled on the subject of his corrupting wealth, articles written
for effect, hypocritical verbiage to which public opinion resorts from
time to time to revenge itself on the innocent for all its concessions
to the guilty. It was a terrible disappointment, which caused him at
first more pain than anger. Deeply moved, he concealed his distress
behind his opera-glass, turning three-fourths away from the audience and
giving close attention to the slightest details of the performance, but
unable to avoid the scandalized scrutiny of which he was the victim, and
which made his ears ring, his temples throb, and covered the dimmed
lenses of his opera-glass with multi-colored circles, whirling about in
the first vagaries of apoplexy.

When the act came to an end and the curtain fell, he remained, without
moving, in that embarrassed attitude; but the louder whispering, no
longer restrained by the stage dialogue, and the persistency of certain
curious persons who changed their seats in order to obtain a better view
of him, compelled him to leave his box, to rush out into the lobby like
a wild beast fleeing from the arena through the circus.

Under the low ceiling, in the narrow circular passage common in theatre
lobbi