“Jacques, fear no one, since you are not comparable to any one.”

He knew, on the contrary, how insignificant he was and how insignificant every one is in this world where beings, agitated like grains in a van, are mixed and separated by a shake of the rustic or of the god.  This idea of the agricultural or mystical van represented measure and order too well to be exactly applied to life.  It seemed to him that men were grains in a coffee-mill.  He had had a vivid sensation of this the day before, when he saw Madame Fusellier grinding coffee in her mill.

Therese said to him: 

“Why are you not conceited?”

She added few words, but she spoke with her eyes, her arms, the breath that made her bosom rise.

In the happy surprise of seeing and hearing her, he permitted himself to be convinced.

She asked who had said so odious a thing.

He had no reason to conceal his name from her.  It was Daniel Salomon.

She was not surprised.  Daniel Salomon, who passed for not having been the lover of any woman, wished at least to be in the confidence of all and know their secrets.  She guessed the reason why he had talked.

“Jacques, do not be cross at what I say to you.  You are not skilful in concealing your sentiments.  He suspected you were in love with me, and he wished to be sure of it.  I am persuaded that now he has no doubt of our relations.  But that is indifferent to me.  On the contrary, if you knew better how to dissimulate, I should be less happy.  I should think you did not love me enough.”

For fear of disquieting him, she turned to other thoughts: 

“I have not told you how much I like your sketch.  It is Florence on the Arno.  Then it is we?”

“Yes, I have placed in that figure the emotion of my love.  It is sad, and I wish it were beautiful.  You see, Therese, beauty is painful.  That is why, since life is beautiful, I suffer.”

He took out of his flannel coat his cigarette-holder, but she told him to dress.  She would take him to breakfast with her.  They would not quit each other that day.  It would be delightful.

She looked at him with childish joy.  Then she became sad, thinking she would have to return to Dinard at the end of the week, later go to Joinville, and that during that time they would be separated.

At Joinville, at her father’s, she would cause him to be invited for a few days.  But they would not be free and alone there, as they were in Paris.

“It is true,” he said, “that Paris is good to us in its confused immensity.”

And he added: 

“Even in your absence I can not quit Paris.  It would be terrible for me to live in countries that do not know you.  A sky, mountains, trees, fountains, statues which do not know how to talk of you would have nothing to say to me.”

While he was dressing she turned the leaves of a book which she had found on the table.  It was The Arabian Nights.  Romantic engravings displayed here and there in the text grand viziers, sultanas, black tunics, bazaars, and caravans.