have noticed that children, when they are
handsome, look, when they pout, like Napoleon at Waterloo. You have made
me feel the profound reasons for this similarity."

Then, turning toward Dechartre:

"Do you like Napoleon?"

"Madame, I do not like the Revolution. And Napoleon is the Revolution in
boots."

"Monsieur Dechartre, why did you not say this at dinner? But I see you
prefer to be witty only in tete-a-tetes."

Count Martin-Belleme escorted the men to the smoking-room. Paul Vence
alone remained with the women. Princess Seniavine asked him if he had
finished his novel, and what was the subject of it. It was a study in
which he tried to reach the truth through a series of plausible
conditions.

"Thus," he said, "the novel acquires a moral force which history, in its
heavy frivolity, never had."

She inquired whether the book was written for women. He said it was not.

"You are wrong, Monsieur Vence, not to write for women. A superior man
can do nothing else for them."

He wished to know what gave her that idea.

"Because I see that all the intelligent women love fools."

"Who bore them."

"Certainly! But superior men would weary them more. They would have more
resources to employ in boring them. But tell me the subject of your
novel."

"Do you insist?"

"Oh, I insist upon nothing."

"Well, I will tell you. It is a study of popular manners; the history of
a young workman, sober and chaste, as handsome as a girl, with the mind
of a virgin, a sensitive soul. He is a carver, and works well. At night,
near his mother, whom he loves, he studies, he reads books. In his mind,
simple and receptive, ideas lodge themselves like bullets in a wall. He
has no desires. He has neither the passions nor the vices that attach us
to life. He is solitary and pure. Endowed with strong virtues, he becomes
conceited. He lives among miserable people. He sees suffering. He has
devotion without humanity. He has that sort of cold charity which is
called altruism. He is not human because he is not sensual."

"Oh! One must be sensual to be human?"

"Certainly, Madame. True pity, like tenderness, comes from the heart. He
is not intelligent enough to doubt. He believes what he has read. And he
has read that to establish universal happiness society must be destroyed.
Thirst for martyrdom devours him. One morning, having kissed his mother,
he goes out; he watches for the socialist deputy of his district, sees
him, throws himse