g insolent and forward while hooking her dress and tying her shoes.
I, I have forgotten everything. I only remember that you are my
celestial brother, the saintly companion of my childhood. No, Arcade,
you must not, you cannot leave me. You are my angel; you are my
property."

Arcade explained to young d'Esparvieu that he could no longer be guiding
angel to a Christian, having himself gone down into the pit. And he
painted a horrible picture of himself; he described himself as breathing
hatred and fury; in fact, an infernal spirit.

"All nonsense!" said Maurice, smiling, his eyes big with tears.

"Alas! our ideas, our destiny, everything tends to part us, Maurice. But
I cannot stifle the tenderness I feel for you, and your candour forces
me to love you."

"No," sighed Maurice. "You do not love me. You have never loved me. In a
brother or a sister such indifference would be natural; in a friend it
would be ordinary; in a guardian angel it is monstrous. Arcade, you are
an abominable being. I hate you."

"I have loved you dearly, Maurice, and I still love you. You trouble my
heart which I deemed encased in triple bronze. You show me my own
weakness. When you were a little innocent boy I loved you as tenderly
and purely as Miss Kate, your English governess, who caressed you with
so much fervour. In the country, when the thin bark of the plane trees
peels off in long strips and discloses the tender green trunk, after the
rains which make the fine sand run on the sloping paths, I showed you
how with that sand, those strips of bark, a few wild flowers, and a
spray of maidenhair fern to make rustic bridges, rustic shelters,
terraces, and those gardens of Adonis, which last but an hour. During
the month of May in Paris we raised an altar to the Virgin, and we burnt
incense before it, the scent of which, permeating all the house,
reminded Marcelline, the cook, of her village church and her lost
innocence, and drew from her floods of tears; it also gave your mother a
headache, your mother who, with all her wealth, was crushed with the
_ennui_ that is common to the fortunate ones of this world. When you
went to college I interested myself in your progress, I shared your work
and your play, I pondered with you over arduous problems in arithmetic,
I sought the impenetrable meaning of a phrase of Julius Caesar's. What
fine games of prisoners' base and football we had together! More than
once did we know the intoxication of victor