Pale-tinted Gothic tapestries, which let one perceive in a marvellous forest a lady at the feet of whom a unicorn lay on the grass, extended above cabinets to the painted beams of the ceiling.  He led her to a large and low divan, loaded with cushions covered with sumptuous fragments of Spanish and Byzantine cloaks; but she sat in an armchair.  “You are here!  You are here!  The world may come to an end.”

She replied “Formerly I thought of the end of the world, but I was not afraid of it.  Monsieur Lagrange had promised it to me, and I was waiting for it.  When I did not know you, I felt so lonely.”  She looked at the tables loaded with vases and statuettes, the tapestries, the confused and splendid mass of weapons, the animals, the marbles, the paintings, the ancient books.  “You have beautiful things.”

“Most of them come from my father, who lived in the golden age of collectors.  These histories of the unicorn, the complete series of which is at Cluny, were found by my father in 1851 in an inn.”

But, curious and disappointed, she said:  “I see nothing that you have done; not a statue, not one of those wax figures which are prized so highly in England, not a figurine nor a plaque nor a medal.”

“If you think I could find any pleasure in living among my works!  I know my figures too well—­they weary me.  Whatever is without secret lacks charm.”  She looked at him with affected spite.

“You had not told me that one had lost all charm when one had no more secrets.”

He put his arm around her waist.

“Ah!  The things that live are only too mysterious; and you remain for me, my beloved, an enigma, the unknown sense of which contains the light of life.  Do not fear to give yourself to me.  I shall desire you always, but I never shall know you.  Does one ever possess what one loves?  Are kisses, caresses, anything else than the effort of a delightful despair?  When I embrace you, I am still searching for you, and I never have you; since I want you always, since in you I expect the impossible and the infinite.  What you are, the devil knows if I shall ever know!  Because I have modelled a few bad figures I am not a sculptor; I am rather a sort of poet and philosopher who seeks for subjects of anxiety and torment in nature.  The sentiment of form is not sufficient for me.  My colleagues laugh at me because I have not their simplicity.  They are right.  And that brute Choulette is right too, when he says we ought to live without thinking and without desiring.  Our friend the cobbler of Santa Maria Novella, who knows nothing of what might make him unjust and unfortunate, is a master of the art of living.  I ought to love you naively, without that sort of metaphysics which is passional and makes me absurd and wicked.  There is nothing good except to ignore and to forget.  Come, come, I have thought of you too cruelly in the tortures of your absence; come, my beloved!  I must forget you with you.  It is with you only that I can forget you and lose myself.”