"Wrong? No wrong at all; but I should be anxious for you; I should be
afraid. See here, my friend. I know you well. You are a born man of
letters, a dreamer, an artist in your way. You have to help you on
entering the redoubtable lists of love neither foresight, nor a cool
head, nor determination. You are guided solely by your impressions; by
them you rise or fall. You are no more than a child."

"I quite agree. What next?"

"What next?" He had risen, and was speaking with unusual vehemence. "I
once knew some one like you, whose first passion, rash, but deep as yours
would be, broke his heart forever. The heart, my friend, is liable to
break, and can not be mended like china."

Lampron's mother interrupted him afresh, reproachfully.

"He came to wish you a happy birthday, my child."

"One day, mother, is as good as another to listen to good advice.
Besides, I am only talking of one of my friends. 'Tis but a short story,
Fabien, and instructive. I will give it you in very few words. My friend
was very young and enthusiastic. He was on his way through the galleries
of Italy, brush in hand, his heart full of the ceaseless song of youth in
holiday. The world never had played him false, nor balked him. He made
the future bend to the fancy of his dreams. He seldom descended among
common men from those loftier realms where the contemplation of endless
masterpieces kept his spirit as on wings. He admired, copied, filled his
soul with the glowing beauty of Italian landscape and Italian art. But
one day, without reflection, without knowledge, without foresight, he was
rash enough to fall in love with a girl of noble birth whose portrait he
was painting; to speak to her and to win her love. He thought then, in
the silly innocence of his youth, that art abridges all distance and that
love effaces it. Crueller nonsense never was uttered, my poor Fabien. He
soon found this; he tried to struggle against the parent's denial,
against himself, against her, powerless in all alike, beaten at every
point.... The end was--Do you care to learn the end? The girl was carried
off, struck down by a brief illness, soon dead; the man, hurled out of
heaven, bruised, a fugitive also, is still so weak in presence of his
sorrow that even after these long years he can not think of it without
weeping."

Lampron actually was weeping, he who was so seldom moved. Down his brown
beard, tinged already with gray, a tear was trickling. I noticed that
Ma