n a half-demented state, walking hurriedly up
and down, talking aloud in broken sentences, sometimes standing still
or sitting down, without noticing the uneasiness of two custom-house
officers who were on the watch. After loving Modeste's wit and
intellect and her aggressive frankness, he now joined adoration of her
beauty--that is to say, love without reason, love inexplicable--to all
the other reasons which had drawn him ten days earlier, to the church in
Havre.

He returned to the Chalet, where the Pyrenees hounds barked at him till
he was forced to relinquish the pleasure of gazing at Modeste's windows.
In love, such things are of no more account to the lover than the work
which is covered by the last layer of color is to an artist; yet they
make up the whole of love, just as the hidden toil is the whole of art.
Out of them arise the great painter and the true lover whom the woman
and the public end, sometimes too late, by adoring.

"Well then!" he cried aloud, "I will stay, I will suffer, I will love
her for myself only, in solitude. Modeste shall be my sun, my life; I
will breathe with her breath, rejoice in her joys and bear her griefs,
be she even the wife of that egoist, Canalis."

"That's what I call loving, monsieur," said a voice which came from a
shrub by the side of the road. "Ha, ha, so all the world is in love with
Mademoiselle de La Bastie?"

And Butscha suddenly appeared and looked at La Briere. La Briere checked
his anger when, by the light of the moon, he saw the dwarf, and he made
a few steps without replying.

"Soldiers who serve in the same company ought to be good comrades,"
remarked Butscha. "You don't love Canalis; neither do I."

"He is my friend," replied Ernest.

"Ha, you are the little secretary?"

"You are to know, monsieur, that I am no man's secretary. I have the
honor to be of counsel to a supreme court of this kingdom."

"I have the honor to salute Monsieur de La Briere," said Butscha. "I
myself have the honor to be head clerk to Latournelle, chief councillor
of Havre, and my position is a better one than yours. Yes, I have had
the happiness of seeing Mademoiselle Modeste de La Bastie nearly every
evening for the last four years, and I expect to live near her, as a
king's servant lives in the Tuileries. If they offered me the throne of
Russia I should answer, 'I love the sun too well.' Isn't that telling
you, monsieur, that I care more for her than for myself? I am looking