“So you’re for being a cure, are you, that you preach like they do in church?”

But in the main she approved of these exercises, and when Monsieur Servien scratched his head doubtfully and complained that his son would not make up his mind to any way of earning a living, she always took up the cudgels for the “little lad” and silenced the bookbinder by telling him roundly he knew nothing about it—­or about anything else.

So the worthy man went back to his calf-skins.  All the same, albeit he could form no very clear idea of what was in his son’s head, for the latter having become a “gentleman” was beyond his purview, he felt some disquietude to see a holiday, legitimate enough no doubt after a successful examination, dragging out to such a length.  He was anxious to see his son earning money in some department of administration or other.  He had heard speak of the Hotel de Ville and the Government Offices, and he racked his brains to think of someone among his customers who might interest himself in his son’s future.  But he was not the man to act precipitately.

One day, when Jean Servien was out on one of the long walks he had got into the habit of taking, he read on a poster that his Emilie, Mademoiselle Gabrielle T——­, was appearing in that evening’s piece.  This time, ignoring his aunt’s disapproval, he donned his Sunday clothes, had his hair frizzed and curled, and took his seat in the orchestra stalls.

He saw her again!  For the first few moments she did not seem so beautiful as he had pictured her.  So long had he laboured and lain awake over the first image he had carried away of her that the impression had become blurred, and the type that had originally imprinted it on his heart no longer corresponded with the result created by his mind’s unconscious working.  Then he was disconcerted to see neither the white stola and saffron mantle nor the bracelets and fillets that had seemed to him part and parcel of the beauty they adorned.  Now she wore the turban of Roxana and the wide muslin trousers caught in at the ankle.  It was only by degrees he could grow reconciled to the change.  He realized that her arms were a trifle thin, and that a tooth stood back behind the rest in the row of pearls.  But in the end her very defects pleased him, because they were hers, and he loved her the better for them.  This time, by the law of change which is of the very essence of life, and by virtue of the imperfection that characterizes all living creatures, she made a physical appeal to his senses and called up the idea of a human being of flesh and blood, a creature you could cling to and make one with yourself.  His admiration was lost in a flood of tenderness and infinite sadness—­and he burst into tears.

The next day he conceived a great desire to see her as she was in everyday life, dressed for the streets.  It would be a sort of intimacy merely to pass her on the pavement.  One evening, when she was playing, he watched for her at the stage-door, through which emerged one after the other scene-shifters, actors, constables, firemen, dressers, and actresses.  At last she appeared, muffled in her fur cloak, a bouquet in her hand, tall and pale—­so pale in the dusk her face seemed to him as if illumined by an inward light.  She stood waiting on the doorstep till a carriage was called.