“It needed your presence, Monsieur Mouillard,” said she, “to drag him from his work.”

“Saint Sylvester’s day, too.  It is fearful!  Love for his art has changed your son’s nature, Madame Lampron.”

She gave him a tender look, as on entering the room he bent over the fire and shook out his half-smoked pipe against the bars, a thing he never failed to do the moment he entered his mother’s room.

“Dear child!” said she.

Then turning to me: 

“You are a good friend, Monsieur Fabien.  Never have we celebrated a Saint Sylvester without you since you came to Paris.”

“Yet this evening, Madame, I have failed in my traditions, I have no flowers.  But Sylvestre tells me that you have just received flowers from the south, from an unfortunate creditor.”

My words produced an unusual effect upon her.  She, who never stopped knitting to talk or to listen, laid her work upon her knees, and fixed her eyes upon me, filled with anxiety.

“Has he told you?”

Lampron who was poking the fire, his slippered feet stretched out toward the hearth, turned his head.

“No, mother, I merely told him that we had received a basket of flowers.  Not much to confide.  Yet why should he not know all?  Surely he is our friend enough to know all.  He should have known it long since were it not cruel to share between three a burden that two can well bear.”

She made no answer, and began again to twist the wool between her needles, but nervously and as if her thoughts were sad.

To change the conversation I told them the story of my twofold mishap at the National Library and at M. Charnot’s.  I tried to be funny, and fancied I succeeded.  The old lady smiled faintly.  Lampron remained grave, and tossed his head impatiently.  I summed my story thus: 

“Net gain:  two enemies, one of them charming.”

“Oh, enemies!” said Sylvestre, “they spring up like weeds.  One can not prevent them, and great sorrows do not come from them.  Still, beware of charming enemies.”

“She hates me, I swear.  If you could have seen her!”

“And you?”

“Me?  She is nothing to me.”

“Are you sure?”

He put the question gravely, without looking in my face, as he twisted a paper spill.

I laughed.

“What is the matter with you to-day, misanthrope?  I assure you that she is absolutely indifferent to me.  But even were it otherwise, Sylvestre, where would be the wrong?”

“Wrong?  No wrong at all; but I should be anxious for you; I should be afraid.  See here, my friend.  I know you well.  You are a born man of letters, a dreamer, an artist in your way.  You have to help you on entering the redoubtable lists of love neither foresight, nor a cool head, nor determination.  You are guided solely by your impressions; by them you rise or fall.  You are no more than a child.”