him!

Then Amedee must admire the baby, who was now awake in his nurse's arms,
aroused by his father's noisy gayety. The child opened his blue eyes, as
serious as those of an old man's, and peeped out from the depth of lace,
feebly squeezing the finger that the poet extended to him.

"What do you call him?" asked Amedee, troubled to find anything to say.

"Maurice, after his father," quickly responded Maria, who also put a
mint of love into these words.

Amedee could endure no more. He made some pretext for withdrawing and
went away, promising that he would see them again soon.

"I shall not go there very often!" he said to himself, as he descended
the steps, furious with himself that he was obliged to hold back a sob.

He went there, however, and always suffered from it. He was the one who
had made this marriage; he ought to rejoice that Maurice, softened
by conjugal life and paternity, did not return to his recklessness of
former days; but, on the contrary, the sight of this household, Maria's
happy looks, the allusions that she sometimes made of gratitude to
Amedee; above all Maurice's domineering way in his home, his way of
speaking to his wife like an indulgent master to a slave delighted
to obey, all displeased and unmanned him. He always left Maurice's
displeased with himself, and irritated with the bad sentiments that he
had in his heart; ashamed of loving another's wife, the wife of his old
comrade; and keeping up all the same his friendship for Maurice, whom he
was never able to see without a feeling of envy and secret bitterness.

He managed to lengthen the distance between his visits to the young
pair, and to put another interest into his life. He was now a man of
leisure, and his fortune allowed him to work when he liked and
felt inspired. He returned to society and traversed the midst of
miscellaneous parlors, greenrooms, and Bohemian society. He loitered
about these places a great deal and lost his time, was interested by all
the women, duped by his tender imagination; always expending too much
sensibility in his fancies; taking his desires for love, and devoting
himself to women.

The first of his loves was a beautiful Madame, whom he met in the
Countess Fontaine's parlors. She was provided with a very old husband
belonging to the political and financial world; a servant of several
regimes, who having on many occasions feathered his own nest, made false
statements of accounts, and betrayed his vo