She also told him that for a long time past, for months, Girmandel had
been nothing more than a friend, and he believed her. In short, he was
deceiving the bailiff, and it was agreeable to him to feel that he
enjoyed this advantage. He had learned also that Felicie, who was just
finishing her second year at the Conservatoire, had not denied herself
to her professor. But the grief which he had felt because of this was
softened by a time-honoured and venerable custom. Now Robert de Ligny
was causing him intolerable suffering. For some time past he had found
him incessantly dangling about her. He could not doubt that she loved
Robert; and although he sometimes told himself that she had not yet
given herself to this man, it was not that he believed it, but merely
that he was fain sometimes to mitigate the bitterness of his
sufferings.

Mechanical applause broke out at the back of the theatre, and a few
members of the orchestra, murmuring inaudibly, clapped their hands
slowly and noiselessly. Nanteuil had just given her last reply to Jeanne
Perrin.

"_Brava! Brava!_ She is delightful, dear little woman!" sighed Madame
Doulce.

In his jealous anger, Chevalier was disloyal. Lifting a finger to his
forehead, he remarked:

"She plays with _that_." Then, placing his hand upon his heart, he
added: "It is with this that one should act."

"Thanks, dear friend, thanks!" murmured Madame Doulce, who read into
these maxims an obvious eulogy of herself.

She was, indeed, in the habit of asserting that all good acting comes
from the heart; she maintained that, to give full expression to a
passion, it was necessary to experience it, and to feel in one's own
person the expressions that one wished to represent. She was fond of
referring to herself as an example of this. When appearing as a tragedy
queen, after draining a goblet of poison on the stage, her bowels had
been on fire all night. Nevertheless she was given to saying: "The
dramatic art is an imitative art, and one imitates an emotion all the
better for not having experienced it." And to illustrate this maxim she
drew yet further examples from her triumphant career.

She gave a deep sigh.

"The child is admirably gifted. But she is to be pitied; she has been
born into a bad period. There is no longer a public nowadays; no
critics, no plays, no theatres, no artists. It is a decadence of art."

Chevalier shook his head.

"No need to pity her," he said. "She will have all t