; he was a conceited, narrow-minded fellow,
a dull, tiresome prig.

Jean was neither surprised nor excessively shocked to hear that
she had a lover, because having studied the ways of the ladies
of the theatre in the proverbs in verse of Alfred de Musset, he
pictured the life of Parisian actresses without exception as
one continual feast of wit and gallantry. He loved her; with or
without Didier, he loved her. She might have had three hundred
lovers, like Lesbia,--he would have loved her just as much. Is
it not always so with men's passions? They are in love because
they are in love, and in spite of everything.

As for feeling jealousy of Monsieur Didier, he never so much
as thought of it. The infatuation of the lad! He was jealous
of the men and women who saw her pass to and fro in the street,
of the scene-shifters and workmen whom the business of the stage
brought into contact with her. For the present these were his only
rivals. For the rest, he trusted to the future, the ineffable
future big whether with bliss or torment. Indeed, the literature
of romance had inspired him with no small esteem of courtesans,
if only their attitude was as it should be--leaning pensively
on the balcony-rail of their marble palace.

What did shock him in the rapscallion architect's stories, what
wounded his love without weakening it, was all the rather squalid
elements these narratives implied in the actress's young days.
Of all things in the world he thought anything sordid the most
repugnant.

Monsieur Tudesco, feeling sure his brandy-cherries would be paid
for, did not trouble himself to talk, and the conversation was
languishing when the architect remarked casually:

"By-the-by! As I was going to Bellevue yesterday on business
of my own, I came upon that actress of yours, young man, at her
gate... oh! a rubbishy little villa, run up to last through a
love affair, standing in six square yards of garden, meant to
give a stock-broker some sort of notion what the country's like.
She invited me in--but what was the use?"...

She was at Bellevue! Jean forgot all the humiliating details
the old man had told him, retaining the one fact only, that she
was at Bellevue and it was possible to see her there in the sweet
intimacy of the country.

He got up to go. Monsieur Tudesco caught him by the skirt of his
jacket to detain him:

"My young friend, you have my admiration; for I see you rise
on daring pinions above the hindrances of