“Ah!  I see,” said the count, “some intrigue,—­a love affair!  Youth is happy!”

Oscar, who was writhing in his skin at being a nobody and having nothing to say, gazed at Colonel Czerni-Georges and at the famous painter Schinner, and wondered how he could transform himself into somebody.  But a youth of nineteen, kept at home all his life, and going for two weeks only into the country, what could he be, or do, or say?  However, the Alicante had got into his head, and his vanity was boiling in his veins; so when the famous Schinner allowed a romantic adventure to be guessed at in which the danger seemed as great as the pleasure, he fastened his eyes, sparkling with wrath and envy, upon that hero.

“Yes,” said the count, with a credulous air, “a man must love a woman well to make such sacrifices.”

“What sacrifices?” demanded Mistigris.

“Don’t you know, my little friend, that a ceiling painted by so great a master as yours is worth its weight in gold?” replied the count.  “If the civil list paid you, as it did, thirty thousand francs for each of those rooms in the Louvre,” he continued, addressing Schinner, “a bourgeois,—­as you call us in the studios—­ought certainly to pay you twenty thousand.  Whereas, if you go to this chateau as a humble decorator, you will not get two thousand.”

“The money is not the greatest loss,” said Mistigris.  “The work is sure to be a masterpiece, but he can’t sign it, you know, for fear of compromising her.”

“Ah!  I’d return all my crosses to the sovereigns who gave them to me for the devotion that youth can win,” said the count.

“That’s just it!” said Mistigris, “when one’s young, one’s loved; plenty of love, plenty of women; but they do say:  ’Where there’s wife, there’s mope.’”

“What does Madame Schinner say to all this?” pursued the count; “for I believe you married, out of love, the beautiful Adelaide de Rouville, the protegee of old Admiral de Kergarouet; who, by the bye, obtained for you the order for the Louvre ceilings through his nephew, the Comte de Fontaine.”

“A great painter is never married when he travels,” said Mistigris.

“So that’s the morality of studios, is it?” cried the count, with an air of great simplicity.

“Is the morality of courts where you got those decorations of yours any better?” said Schinner, recovering his self-possession, upset for the moment by finding out how much the count knew of Schinner’s life as an artist.

“I never asked for any of my orders,” said the count.  “I believe I have loyally earned them.”

“‘A fair yield and no flavor,’” said Mistigris.

The count was resolved not to betray himself; he assumed an air of good-humored interest in the country, and looked up the valley of Groslay as the coucou took the road to Saint-Brice, leaving that to Chantilly on the right.

“Is Rome as fine as they say it is?” said Georges, addressing the great painter.