hing creature; he
suddenly comprehended Lucien's love, and just what must have fascinated
the poet. Such a passion hides among a thousand temptations a dart-like
hook which is most apt to catch the lofty soul of an artist. These
passions, inexplicable to the vulgar, are perfectly accounted for by the
thirst for ideal beauty, which is characteristic of a creative mind.
For are we not, in some degree, akin to the angels, whose task it is to
bring the guilty to a better mind? are we not creative when we purify
such a creature? How delightful it is to harmonize moral with physical
beauty! What joy and pride if we succeed! How noble a task is that which
has no instrument but love!

Such alliances, made famous by the example of Aristotle, Socrates,
Plato, Alcibiades, Cethegus, and Pompey, and yet so monstrous in the
eyes of the vulgar, are based on the same feeling that prompted Louis
XIV. to build Versailles, or that makes men rush into any ruinous
enterprise--into converting the miasma of a marsh into a mass of
fragrance surrounded by living waters; placing a lake at the top of a
hill, as the Prince de Conti did at Nointel; or producing Swiss scenery
at Cassan, like Bergeret, the farmer-general. In short, it is the
application of art in the realm of morals.

The priest, ashamed of having yielded to this weakness, hastily pushed
Esther away, and she sat down quite abashed, for he said:

"You are still the courtesan." And he calmly replaced the paper in his
sash.

Esther, like a child who has a single wish in its head, kept her eyes
fixed on the spot where the document lay hidden.

"My child," the priest went on after a pause, "your mother was a Jewess,
and you have not been baptized; but, on the other hand, you have never
been taken to the synagogue. You are in the limbo where little children
are----"

"Little children!" she echoed, in a tenderly pathetic tone.

"As you are on the books of the police, a cipher outside the pale of
social beings," the priest went on, unmoved. "If love, seen as it swept
past, led you to believe three months since that you were then born, you
must feel that since that day you have been really an infant. You
must, therefore, be led as if you were a child; you must be completely
changed, and I will undertake to make you unrecognizable. To begin with,
you must forget Lucien."

The words crushed the poor girl's heart; she raised her eyes to the
priest and shook her head; she could not spea