Madame Martin said that nobody interested her so much as Choulette.  Paul Vence said that he was a singular specimen of humanity.

“He is not very different from the saints of whose extraordinary lives we read.  He is as sincere as they.  He has an exquisite delicacy of sentiment and a terrible violence of mind.  If he shocks one by many of his acts, the reason is that he is weaker, less supported, or perhaps less closely observed.  And then there are unworthy saints, just as there are bad angels:  Choulette is a worldly saint, that is all.  But his poems are true poems, and much finer than those written by the bishops of the seventeenth century.”

She interrupted him: 

“While I think of it, I wish to congratulate you on your friend Dechartre.  He has a charming mind.”

She added: 

“Perhaps he is a little too timid.”

Vence reminded her that he had told her she would find Dechartre interesting.

“I know him by heart; he has been my friend since our childhood.”

“You knew his parents?”

“Yes.  He is the only son of Philippe Dechartre.”

“The architect?”

“The architect who, under Napoleon III, restored so many castles and churches in Touraine and the Orleanais.  He had taste and knowledge.  Solitary and quiet in his life, he had the imprudence to attack Viollet-le-Duc, then all-powerful.  He reproached him with trying to reestablish buildings in their primitive plan, as they had been, or as they might have been, at the beginning.  Philippe Dechartre, on the contrary, wished that everything which the lapse of centuries had added to a church, an abbey, or a castle should be respected.  To abolish anachronisms and restore a building to its primitive unity, seemed to him to be a scientific barbarity as culpable as that of ignorance.  He said:  ’It is a crime to efface the successive imprints made in stone by the hands of our ancestors.  New stones cut in old style are false witnesses.’  He wished to limit the task of the archaeologic architect to that of supporting and consolidating walls.  He was right.  Everybody said that he was wrong.  He achieved his ruin by dying young, while his rival triumphed.  He bequeathed an honest fortune to his widow and his son.  Jacques Dechartre was brought up by his mother, who adored him.  I do not think that maternal tenderness ever was more impetuous.  Jacques is a charming fellow; but he is a spoiled child.”

“Yet he appears so indifferent, so easy to understand, so distant from everything.”

“Do not rely on this.  He has a tormented and tormenting imagination.”

“Does he like women?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh, it isn’t with any idea of match-making.”

“Yes, he likes them.  I told you that he was an egoist.  Only selfish men really love women.  After the death of his mother, he had a long liaison with a well-known actress, Jeanne Tancrede.”