er, he would be a monster if he refused!"

"My child, your brother is an honest man and a good son. But do not ask
him, oh! do not ask him to intercede for Monsieur de Chassagne....
Listen to me, Julie. He does not confide his thoughts to me and, no
doubt, I should not be competent to understand them ... but he is a
juror; he has principles; he acts as his conscience dictates. Do not ask
him anything, Julie."

"Ah! I see you know him now. You know that he is cold, callous, that he
is a bad man, that ambition and vainglory are his only guides. And you
always loved him better than me. When we lived together, all three of
us, you set him up as my pattern to copy. His staid demeanour and grave
speech impressed you; you thought he possessed all the virtues. And me,
me you always blamed, you gave me all the vices, because I was frank and
free, and because I climbed trees. You could never endure me. You loved
nobody but him. There, I hate him, your model Evariste; he is a
hypocrite."

"Hush, Julie! I have been a good mother to you as well as to him. I had
you taught a trade. It has been no fault of mine that you are not an
honest woman and did not marry in your station. I loved you tenderly and
I love you still. I forgive you and I love you. But do not speak ill of
Evariste. He is a good son. He has always taken care of me. When you
left me, my child, when you abandoned your trade and forsook your shop,
to go and live with Monsieur de Chassagne, what would have become of me
without him? I should have died of hunger and wretchedness."

"Do not talk so, mother; you know very well we would have cherished you
with all affection, Fortune and I, if you had not turned your face from
us, at Evariste's instigation. Never tell me! he is incapable of a
kindly action. It was to make me odious in your eyes that he made a
pretence of caring for you. He! love you?... Is he capable of loving
anyone? He has neither heart nor head. He has no talent, not a scrap. To
paint, a man must have a softer, tenderer nature than his."

She threw a glance round the canvases in the studio, which she found to
be no better and no worse than when she left her home.

"There you see his soul! he has put it in his pictures, cold and sombre
as it is. His Orestes, his Orestes with the dull eye and cruel mouth,
and looking as if he had been impaled, is himself all over.... But,
mother, cannot you understand at all? I cannot leave Fortune in prison.
You know th