London, Florent took charge of the entire proceeding—­seeing the journalists and picture dealers, composing letters of thanks for the articles, in a handwriting so like that of the painter that the latter had only to sign it.  Lincoln desired to return to Rome.  Florent had discovered the house on the Rue Leopardi, and he settled it even before Maitland, then in Egypt, had finished a large study begun at the moment of the departure of the other.

Florent had, by virtue of the affection felt for his brother-in-law, come to comprehend the paintings as well as the painter himself.  These words will be clear to those who have been around artists and who know what a distance separates them from the most enlightened amateur.  The amateur can judge and feel.  The artist only, who has wielded the implements, knows, before a painting, how it is done, what stroke of the brush has been given, and why; in short, the trituration of the matter by the workman.  Florent had watched Maitland work so much, he had rendered him so many effective little services in the studio, that each of his brother-in-law’s canvases became animated to him, even to the slightest details.  When he saw them on the wall of the gallery they told him of an intimacy which was at once his greatest joy and his greatest pride.  In short, the absorption of his personality in that of his former comrade was so complete that it had led to this anomaly, that Dorsenne himself, notwithstanding his indulgence for psychological singularities, had not been able to prevent himself from finding almost monstrous:  Florent was Lincoln’s brother-in-law, and he seemed to find it perfectly natural that the latter should have adventures outside, if the emotion of those adventures could be useful to his talent!

Perhaps this long and yet incomplete analysis will permit us the better to comprehend what emotions agitated the young man as he reascended the staircase of his house—­of their house, Lincoln’s and his—­after his unexpected dispute with Boleslas Gorka.  It will attenuate, at least with respect to him, the severity of simple minds.  All passion, when developed in the heart, has the effect of etiolating around it the vigor of other instincts.  Chapron was too fanatical a friend to be a very equitable brother.  It seemed to him very simple and very legitimate that his sister should be at the service of the genius of Lincoln, as he himself was.  Moreover, if, since the marriage with her brother’s friend, his sister had been stirred by the tempest of a moral tragedy, Florent did not suspect it.  When had he studied Lydia, the silent, reserved Lydia, of whom he had once for all formed an opinion, as is the almost invariable custom of relative with relative?  Those who have seen us when young are like those who see us daily.  The images which they trace of us always reproduce what we were at a certain moment—­scarcely ever what we are.  Florent considered his sister very good, because he had formerly found her so; very gentle, because she had never resisted him; not intelligent, because she did not seem sufficiently interested in the painter’s work; as for the suffering and secret rebellion of the oppressed creature, crushed between his blind partiality and the selfishness of a scornful husband, he did not even suspect them, much less the terrible resolution of which that apparent resignation was capable.