and that
artless admiration, the first love of adolescence, which is always
irritated by criticism. It is so natural that flame should rise! He
listened to that charming Parisian raillery, that graceful satire which
revealed to him French wit and the qualities of the French mind, and
awakened in him a thousand ideas, which might have slumbered forever in
the soft torpor of his family life. For him, Mademoiselle des Touches
was the mother of his intellect. She was so kind to him; a woman is
always adorable to a man in whom she inspires love, even when she seems
not to share it.

At the present time Felicite was giving him music-lessons. To him the
grand apartments on the lower floor, and her private rooms above, so
coquettish, so artistic, were vivified, were animated by a light, a
spirit, a supernatural atmosphere, strange and undefinable. The
modern world with its poesy was sharply contrasted with the dull and
patriarchal world of Guerande, in the two systems brought face to face
before him. On one side all the thousand developments of Art, on the
other the sameness of uncivilized Brittany. No one will therefore ask
why the poor lad, bored like his mother with the pleasures of _mouche_,
quivered as he approached the house, and rang the bell, and crossed the
court-yard. Such emotions, we may remark, do not assail a mature man,
trained to the ups and downs of life, whom nothing surprises, being
prepared for all.

As the door opened, Calyste, hearing the sound of the piano, supposed
that Camille was in the salon; but when he entered the billiard-hall
he no longer heard it. Camille, he thought, must be playing on a small
upright piano brought by Conti from England and placed by her in her
own little salon. He began to run up the stairs, where the thick carpet
smothered the sound of his steps; but he went more slowly as he neared
the top, perceiving something unusual and extraordinary about the music.
Felicite was playing for herself only; she was communing with her own
being.

Instead of entering the room, the young man sat down upon a Gothic seat
covered with green velvet, which stood on the landing beneath a window
artistically framed in carved woods stained and varnished. Nothing
was ever more mysteriously melancholy than Camille's improvisation; it
seemed like the cry of a soul _de profundis_ to God--from the depths of
a grave! The heart of the young lover recognized the cry of despairing
love, the prayer of a hid