s inclined to familiarity. I warn you."

"My friend, why has Monsieur Fusellier, a janitor, moustaches like a
Tartar?"

"My dear, nature gave them to him. I am not sorry that he has the air of
a sergeant-major and gives me the illusion of being a country neighbor."

Seated on the corner of the divan, he drew her to his knees and gave to
her kisses which she returned.

She rose quickly.

"Show me the other rooms. I am curious. I wish to see everything."

He escorted her to the second story. Aquarelles by Philippe Dechartre
covered the walls of the corridor. He opened the door and made her enter
a room furnished with white mahogany:

It was his mother's room. He kept it intact in its past. Uninhabited for
nine years, the room had not the air of being resigned to its solitude.
The mirror waited for the old lady's glance, and on the onyx clock a
pensive Sappho was lonely because she did not hear the noise of the
pendulum.

There were two portraits on the walls. One by Ricard represented
Philippe Dechartre, very pale, with rumpled hair, and eyes lost in a
romantic dream. The other showed a middle-aged woman, almost beautiful
in her ardent slightness. It was Madame Philippe Dechartre.

"My poor mother's room is like me," said Jacques; "it remembers."

"You resemble your mother," said Therese; "you have her eyes. Paul Vence
told me she adored you."

"Yes," he replied, smilingly. "My mother was excellent, intelligent,
exquisite, marvellously absurd. Her madness was maternal love. She did
not give me a moment of rest. She tormented herself and tormented me."

Therese looked at a bronze figure by Carpeaux, placed on the chiffonier.

"You recognize," said Dechartre, "the Prince Imperial by his ears, which
are like the wings of a zephyr, and which enliven his cold visage.
This bronze is a gift of Napoleon III. My parents went to Compiegne.
My father, while the court was at Fontainebleau, made the plan of the
castle, and designed the gallery. In the morning the Emperor would come,
in his frock-coat, and smoking his meerschaum pipe, to sit near him like
a penguin on a rock. At that time I went to day-school. I listened to
his stories at table, and I have not forgotten them. The Emperor stayed
there, peaceful and quiet, interrupting his long silence with few words
smothered under his big moustache; then he roused himself a little and
explained his ideas of machinery. He was an inventor. He would draw
a pencil from his p