Maurice is more attractive and gracious than ever.  His beauty is more manly, and his golden moustache glistens against his sun-browned skin.  What a fine fellow!  How he rejoiced at his friend’s first success!

“I am certain that your book will turn everybody’s head.  I always told you that you were a genuine poet.  We shall see!”

As to himself, he was happy too.  His mother had let him off from studying law and allowed him to follow his vocation.  He was going to have a studio and paint.  It had all been decided in Italy, where Madame Roger had witnessed her son’s enthusiasm over the great masters.  Ah, Italy!  Italy! and he began to tell of his trip, show knickknacks and souvenirs of all kinds that littered the room.  He turned in his hands, that he might show all its outlines, a little terra-cotta reduction of the Antinous in the Museum of Naples.  He opened a box, full to bursting, of large photographs, and passed them to his friend with exclamations of retrospective admiration.

“Look! the Coliseum! the ruins of Paestum—­and this antique from the Vatican!  Is it not beautiful?”

While looking at the pictures he recalled the things that he had seen and the impressions he had experienced.  There was a band of collegians in little capes and short trousers taking their walk; they wore buckled shoes, like the abbes of olden times, and nothing could be more droll than to see these childish priests play leapfrog.  There, upon the Riva dei Schiavoni, he had followed a Venetian.  “Shabbily dressed, and fancy, my friend, bare-headed, in a yellow shawl with ragged green fringe!  No, I do not know whether she was pretty, but she possessed in her person all the attractions of Giorgione’s goddesses and Titian’s courtesans combined!”

Maurice is still the same wicked fellow.  But, bah! it suits him; he even boasts of it with such a joyous ardor and such a youthful dash, that it is only one charm the more in him.  The clock struck seven, and they went to dine.  They started off through the Latin Quarter.  Maurice gave his arm to Amedee and told him of his adventures on the other side of the Alps.  Maurice, once started on this subject, could not stop, and while the dinner was being served the traveller continued to describe his escapades.  This kind of conversation was dangerous for Amedee; for it must not be forgotten that for some time the young poet’s innocence had weighed upon him, and this evening he had some pieces of gold in his pocket that rang a chime of pleasure.  While Maurice, with his elbow upon the table, told him his tales of love, Amedee gazed out upon the sidewalk at the women who passed by in fresh toilettes, in the gaslight which illuminated the green foliage, giving a little nod of the head to those whom they knew.  There was voluptuousness in the very air, and it was Amedee who arose from the table and recalled to Maurice that it was Thursday, and that there was a fete that night at Bullier’s; and he also was the one to add, with a deliberate air: