stigris and the pretended Schinner blushed to their ears.

"Well, with me," said the artist, "the case is different. It isn't on
account of fashion; but I don't want to be recognized. Have the goodness
not to betray me, monsieur; I am supposed to be a little painter of
no consequence,--a mere decorator. I'm on may way to a chateau where I
mustn't rouse the slightest suspicion."

"Ah! I see," said the count, "some intrigue,--a love affair! Youth is
happy!"

Oscar, who was writhing in his skin at being a nobody and having nothing
to say, gazed at Colonel Czerni-Georges and at the famous painter
Schinner, and wondered how he could transform himself into somebody. But
a youth of nineteen, kept at home all his life, and going for two weeks
only into the country, what could he be, or do, or say? However, the
Alicante had got into his head, and his vanity was boiling in his veins;
so when the famous Schinner allowed a romantic adventure to be guessed
at in which the danger seemed as great as the pleasure, he fastened his
eyes, sparkling with wrath and envy, upon that hero.

"Yes," said the count, with a credulous air, "a man must love a woman
well to make such sacrifices."

"What sacrifices?" demanded Mistigris.

"Don't you know, my little friend, that a ceiling painted by so great a
master as yours is worth its weight in gold?" replied the count. "If the
civil list paid you, as it did, thirty thousand francs for each of
those rooms in the Louvre," he continued, addressing Schinner, "a
bourgeois,--as you call us in the studios--ought certainly to pay
you twenty thousand. Whereas, if you go to this chateau as a humble
decorator, you will not get two thousand."

"The money is not the greatest loss," said Mistigris. "The work is
sure to be a masterpiece, but he can't sign it, you know, for fear of
compromising _her_."

"Ah! I'd return all my crosses to the sovereigns who gave them to me for
the devotion that youth can win," said the count.

"That's just it!" said Mistigris, "when one's young, one's loved; plenty
of love, plenty of women; but they do say: 'Where there's wife, there's
mope.'"

"What does Madame Schinner say to all this?" pursued the count; "for I
believe you married, out of love, the beautiful Adelaide de Rouville,
the protegee of old Admiral de Kergarouet; who, by the bye, obtained for
you the order for the Louvre ceilings through his nephew, the Comte de
Fontaine."

"A great painter is never married