triumphant charm, were concealed by a
respectful _sobriquet_ and by her providential qualities.

A very brief explanation having allayed Andre Maranne's excitement, he
offered his apologies to de Gery, invited him to take a seat in the
carved wooden armchair in which his customers posed, and their
conversation speedily assumed an intimate and confidential character,
attributable to the earnest avowal with which it began. Paul confessed
that he too was in love, and that his only purpose in coming so often
to M. Joyeuse's was to talk about his beloved with Grandmamma, who had
known her long before.

"It's the same with me," said Andre. "Grandmamma knows all my secrets;
but we have not dared say anything to her father yet. My position is
too uncertain. Ah! when _Revolte_ has been brought out!"

Thereupon they talked about _Revolte_! the famous drama on which he had
been at work day and night for six months, which had kept him warm all
through the winter, a very hard winter, whose rigor was tempered,
however, by the magic power of composition in the little garret, which
it completely transformed. There, in that confined space, all the
heroes of his play had appeared to the poet, like familiar sprites
falling through the roof or riding on the moonbeams, and with them the
high-warp tapestries, the gleaming chandeliers, the vast parks with
gateways flooded with light, all the usual magnificence of stage-setting,
as well as the glorious uproar of the first performance, the applause
being represented by the rain beating on the windows and the signs
flapping against the door, while the wind, whistling through the
melancholy lumber-yard below with a vague murmur of voices brought from
afar and carried far, resembled the murmur from the boxes opening into
the lobby, allowing his triumph to circulate amid the chattering and
confusion of the audience. It was not simply the renown and the money
that that blessed play were to bring to him, but something far more
precious. How carefully, therefore, did he turn the pages of the
manuscript contained in five great books in blue covers, such books as
the Levantine spread out upon the divan on which she took her siestas,
and marked with her managerial pencil.

Paul having drawn near the table in his turn, in order to examine the
masterpiece, his eyes were attracted by a portrait of a woman in a
handsome frame, which seemed, being so near the artist's work, to have
been stationed there to