A few moments later Lucien appeared, half awake and hastily dressed.  He was handsome, it is true; but his clothes, his last year’s nankeen trousers, and his shabby tight jacket were ridiculous.  Put Antinous or the Apollo Belvedere himself into a water-carrier’s blouse, and how shall you recognize the godlike creature of the Greek or Roman chisel?  The eyes note and compare before the heart has time to revise the swift involuntary judgment; and the contrast between Lucien and Chatelet was so abrupt that it could not fail to strike Louise.

Towards six o’clock that evening, when dinner was over, Mme. de Bargeton beckoned Lucien to sit beside her on the shabby sofa, covered with a flowered chintz—­a yellow pattern on a red ground.

“Lucien mine,” she said, “don’t you think that if we have both of us done a foolish thing, suicidal for both our interests, it would only be common sense to set matters right?  We ought not to live together in Paris, dear boy, and we must not allow anyone to suspect that we traveled together.  Your career depends so much upon my position that I ought to do nothing to spoil it.  So, to-night, I am going to remove into lodgings near by.  But you will stay on here, we can see each other every day, and nobody can say a word against us.”

And Louise explained conventions to Lucien, who opened wide eyes.  He had still to learn that when a woman thinks better of her folly, she thinks better of her love; but one thing he understood—­he saw that he was no longer the Lucien of Angouleme.  Louise talked of herself, of her interests, her reputation, and of the world; and, to veil her egoism, she tried to make him believe that this was all on his account.  He had no claim upon Louise thus suddenly transformed into Mme. de Bargeton, and, more serious still, he had no power over her.  He could not keep back the tears that filled his eyes.

“If I am your glory,” cried the poet, “you are yet more to me—­you are my one hope, my whole future rests with you.  I thought that if you meant to make my successes yours, you would surely make my adversity yours also, and here we are going to part already.”

“You are judging my conduct,” said she; “you do not love me.”

Lucien looked at her with such a dolorous expression, that in spite of herself, she said: 

“Darling, I will stay if you like.  We shall both be ruined, we shall have no one to come to our aid.  But when we are both equally wretched, and every one shuts their door upon us both, when failure (for we must look all possibilities in the face), when failure drives us back to the Escarbas, then remember, love, that I foresaw the end, and that at the first I proposed that we should make your way by conforming to established rules.”

“Louise,” he cried, with his arms around her, “you are wise; you frighten me!  Remember that I am a child, that I have given myself up entirely to your dear will.  I myself should have preferred to overcome obstacles and win my way among men by the power that is in me; but if I can reach the goal sooner through your aid, I shall be very glad to owe all my success to you.  Forgive me!  You mean so much to me that I cannot help fearing all kinds of things; and, for me, parting means that desertion is at hand, and desertion is death.”