Musadieu had a thousand things in his mind, all his subjects for conversation from the moment when Bertin should name his preference; and he let his eloquence loose upon the two or three topics that interested him most.  The painter allowed him to run on without listening to him, and holding him by the arm, sure of being able soon to lead him to talk of Annette, he walked along without noticing his surroundings, imprisoned within his love.  He walked, exhausted by that fit of jealousy which had bruised him like a fall, overcome by the conviction that he had nothing more to do in the world.

He should go on suffering thus, more and more, without expecting anything.  He should pass empty days, one after another, seeing her from afar, living, happy, loved and loving, without doubt.  A lover!  Perhaps she would have a lover, as her mother had had one!  He felt within him sources of suffering so numerous, diverse, and complicated, such an afflux of miseries, such inevitable tortures, he felt so lost, so far overwhelmed, from this moment, by a wave of unimaginable agony that he could not suppose anyone ever had suffered as he did.  And he suddenly thought of the puerility of poets who have invented the useless labor of Sisyphus, the material thirst of Tantalus, the devoured heart of Prometheus!  Oh, if they had foreseen, if they had experienced the mad love of an elderly man for a young girl, how would they had expressed the painful and secret effort of a being who can no longer inspire love, the tortures of fruitless desire, and, more terrible than a vulture’s beak, a little blonde face rending a heart!

Musadieu talked without stopping, and Bertin interrupted him, murmuring almost in spite of himself, under the impulse of his fixed idea: 

“Annette was charming this evening.”

“Yes, delicious!”

The painter added, to prevent Musadieu from taking up the broken thread of his ideas:  “She is prettier than her mother ever was.”

To this the other agreed absent-mindedly, repeating “Yes, yes, yes!” several times in succession, without his mind having yet settled itself on this new idea.

Olivier endeavored to continue the subject, and in order to attract his attention by one of Musadieu’s own favorite fads, he continued: 

“She will have one of the first salons in Paris after her marriage.”

That was enough, and, the man of fashion being convinced, as well as the Inspector of Fine Arts, he began to talk wisely of the social footing on which the Marquise de Farandal would stand in French society.

Bertin listened to him, and fancied Annette in a large salon full of light, surrounded by men and women.  This vision, too, made him jealous.

They were now going up the Boulevard Malesherbes.  As they passed the Guilleroys’ house the painter looked up.  Lights seemed to be shining through the windows, among the openings in the curtains.  He suspected that the Duchess and the Marquis had been invited to come and have a cup of tea.  And a burning rage made him suffer terribly.