“Her influence on your daughter, then,” said Newman encouragingly, “is not to be feared.”

“She cared no more for her daughter than for the sole of her shoe!  But Noemie has no need of influence.  She is sufficient to herself.  She is stronger than I.”

“She doesn’t obey you, eh?”

“She can’t obey, monsieur, since I don’t command.  What would be the use?  It would only irritate her and drive her to some coup de tete.  She is very clever, like her mother; she would waste no time about it.  As a child—­when I was happy, or supposed I was—­she studied drawing and painting with first-class professors, and they assured me she had a talent.  I was delighted to believe it, and when I went into society I used to carry her pictures with me in a portfolio and hand them round to the company.  I remember, once, a lady thought I was offering them for sale, and I took it very ill.  We don’t know what we may come to!  Then came my dark days, and my explosion with Madame Nioche.  Noemie had no more twenty-franc lessons; but in the course of time, when she grew older, and it became highly expedient that she should do something that would help to keep us alive, she bethought herself of her palette and brushes.  Some of our friends in the quartier pronounced the idea fantastic:  they recommended her to try bonnet making, to get a situation in a shop, or—­if she was more ambitious—­to advertise for a place of dame de compagnie.  She did advertise, and an old lady wrote her a letter and bade her come and see her.  The old lady liked her, and offered her her living and six hundred francs a year; but Noemie discovered that she passed her life in her arm-chair and had only two visitors, her confessor and her nephew:  the confessor very strict, and the nephew a man of fifty, with a broken nose and a government clerkship of two thousand francs.  She threw her old lady over, bought a paint-box, a canvas, and a new dress, and went and set up her easel in the Louvre.  There in one place and another, she has passed the last two years; I can’t say it has made us millionaires.  But Noemie tells me that Rome was not built in a day, that she is making great progress, that I must leave her to her own devices.  The fact is, without prejudice to her genius, that she has no idea of burying herself alive.  She likes to see the world, and to be seen.  She says, herself, that she can’t work in the dark.  With her appearance it is very natural.  Only, I can’t help worrying and trembling and wondering what may happen to her there all alone, day after day, amid all that coming and going of strangers.  I can’t be always at her side.  I go with her in the morning, and I come to fetch her away, but she won’t have me near her in the interval; she says I make her nervous.  As if it didn’t make me nervous to wander about all day without her!  Ah, if anything were to happen to her!” cried M. Nioche, clenching his two fists and jerking back his head again, portentously.