rother-in-law, come
to comprehend the paintings as well as the painter himself. These words
will be clear to those who have been around artists and who know what a
distance separates them from the most enlightened amateur. The amateur
can judge and feel. The artist only, who has wielded the implements,
knows, before a painting, how it is done, what stroke of the brush has
been given, and why; in short, the trituration of the matter by the
workman. Florent had watched Maitland work so much, he had rendered him
so many effective little services in the studio, that each of his
brother-in-law's canvases became animated to him, even to the slightest
details. When he saw them on the wall of the gallery they told him of an
intimacy which was at once his greatest joy and his greatest pride. In
short, the absorption of his personality in that of his former comrade
was so complete that it had led to this anomaly, that Dorsenne himself,
notwithstanding his indulgence for psychological singularities, had not
been able to prevent himself from finding almost monstrous: Florent was
Lincoln's brother-in-law, and he seemed to find it perfectly natural that
the latter should have adventures outside, if the emotion of those
adventures could be useful to his talent!

Perhaps this long and yet incomplete analysis will permit us the better
to comprehend what emotions agitated the young man as he reascended the
staircase of his house--of their house, Lincoln's and his--after his
unexpected dispute with Boleslas Gorka. It will attenuate, at least with
respect to him, the severity of simple minds. All passion, when developed
in the heart, has the effect of etiolating around it the vigor of other
instincts. Chapron was too fanatical a friend to be a very equitable
brother. It seemed to him very simple and very legitimate that his sister
should be at the service of the genius of Lincoln, as he himself was.
Moreover, if, since the marriage with her brother's friend, his sister
had been stirred by the tempest of a moral tragedy, Florent did not
suspect it. When had he studied Lydia, the silent, reserved Lydia, of
whom he had once for all formed an opinion, as is the almost invariable
custom of relative with relative? Those who have seen us when young are
like those who see us daily. The images which they trace of us always
reproduce what we were at a certain moment--scarcely ever what we are.
Florent considered his sister very good, because he had f