o read disgusts him with
real work. Indifferent to small things as well as great things, he is
sometimes compelled, by the very weight of his head, to fall into a
debauch, and abdicate for a few hours the fatal power of omnipotent
analysis. He is far too preoccupied with the wrong side of genius, and
Camille Maupin's desire to put him back on the right side is easily
conceivable. The task was an attractive one. Claude Vignon thinks
himself a great politician as well as a great writer; but this
unpublished Machiavelli laughs within himself at all ambitions; he knows
what he can do; he has instinctively taken the measure of his future on
his faculties; he sees his greatness, but he also sees obstacles, grows
alarmed or disgusted, lets the time roll by, and does not go to work.
Like Etienne Lousteau the feuilletonist, like Nathan the dramatic
author, like Blondet, another journalist, he came from the ranks of the
bourgeoisie, to which we owe the greater number of our writers.

"Which way did you come?" asked Mademoiselle des Touches, coloring with
either pleasure or surprise.'

"By the door," replied Claude Vignon, dryly.

"Oh," she cried, shrugging her shoulders, "I am aware that you are not a
man to climb in by a window."

"Scaling a window is a badge of honor for a beloved woman."

"Enough!" said Felicite.

"Am I in the way?" asked Claude.

"Monsieur," said Calyste, artlessly, "this letter--"

"Pray keep it; I ask no questions; at our age we understand such
affairs," he answered, interrupting Calyste with a sardonic air.

"But, monsieur," began Calyste, much provoked.

"Calm yourself, young man; I have the utmost indulgence for sentiments."

"My dear Calyste," said Camille, wishing to speak.

"'Dear'?" said Vignon, interrupting her.

"Claude is joking," said Camille, continuing her remarks to Calyste. "He
is wrong to do it with you, who know nothing of Parisian ways."

"I did not know that I was joking," said Claude Vignon, very gravely.

"Which way did you come?" asked Felicite again. "I have been watching
the road to Croisic for the last two hours."

"Not all the time," replied Vignon.

"You are too bad to jest in this way."

"Am I jesting?"

Calyste rose.

"Why should you go so soon? You are certainly at your ease here," said
Vignon.

"Quite the contrary," replied the angry young Breton, to whom Camille
Maupin stretched out a hand, which he took and kissed, dropping a tear
upon it, after wh