you have only to go and live a few years in the Upper or Lower Alps, in some hole of a town where everybody will like you, and your wife will seduce everybody; and this,’ I added, ’you cannot fail to obtain, especially if you give your dear Celeste to some man who can influence the Chamber.’  Good reasons, stated in jest, have the merit of penetrating deeper into some minds than if they were given soberly.  So Colleville and I became the best friends in the world.  Didn’t you hear him say to me at table, ‘Rascal! you have stolen my speech’?  To-night we shall be theeing and thouing each other.  I intend to have a choice little supper-party soon, where artists, tied to the proprieties at home, always compromise themselves.  I’ll invite him, and that will make us as solidly good friends as he is with Thuillier.  There, my dear adorned one, is what a profound sentiment gives a man the courage to produce.  Colleville must adopt me; so that I may visit your house by his invitation.  But what couldn’t you make me do? lick lepers, swallow live toads, seduce Brigitte—­yes, if you say so, I’ll impale my own heart on that great picket-rail to please you.”

“You frightened me this morning,” she said.

“But this evening you are reassured.  Yes,” he added, “no harm will ever happen to you through me.”

“You are, I must acknowledge, a most extraordinary man.”

“Why, no! the smallest as well as the greatest of my efforts are merely the reflections of the flame which you have kindled.  I intend to be your son-in-law that we may never part.  My wife, heavens! what could she be to me but a machine for child-bearing? whereas the divinity, the sublime being will be—­you,” he whispered in her ear.

“You are Satan!” she said, in a sort of terror.

“No, I am something of a poet, like all the men of my region.  Come, be my Josephine!  I’ll go and see you to-morrow.  I have the most ardent desire to see where you live and how you live, the furniture you use, the color of your stuffs, the arrangement of all things about you.  I long to see the pearl in its shell.”

He slipped away cleverly after these words, without waiting for an answer.

Flavie, to whom in all her life love had never taken the language of romance, sat still, but happy, her heart palpitating, and saying to herself that it was very difficult to escape such influence.  For the first time Theodose had appeared in a pair of new trousers, with gray silk stockings and pumps, a waistcoat of black silk, and a cravat of black satin on the knot of which shone a plain gold pin selected with taste.  He wore also a new coat in the last fashion, and yellow gloves, relieved by white shirt-cuffs; he was the only man who had manners, or deportment in that salon, which was now filling up for the evening.