s for the only real feeling which she had ever experienced.
And indeed she really was not one of those women who cannot make up
their minds to grow old. Long before the hour of curfew--though indeed
there had perhaps never been much fire in her to put out--all her
coquetry, all her feminine eagerness to captivate and charm, all
her aspirations towards fame or fashion or social success had been
transferred to the account of her son, this tall, good-looking young
fellow in the correct attire of the modern artist, with his slight beard
and close-cut hair, who showed in mien and bearing that soldierly grace
which our young men of the day get from their service as volunteers.

'Is your first floor let?' asked the mother at last.

'Let! let! Not a sign of it! All the bills and advertisements no go!
"I don't know what is the matter with them; but they don't come," as
Vedrine said at his private exhibition.'

He laughed quietly, at an inward vision of Vedrine among his enamels and
his sculptures, calm, proud, and self-assured, wondering without anger
at the non-appearance of the public. But Madame Astier did not laugh.
That splendid first floor empty for the last two years! In the Rue
Fortuny! A magnificent situation--a house in the style of Louis XII.--a
house built by her son! Why, what did people want? The same people,
doubtless, who did not go to Vedrine. Biting off the thread with which
she had been sewing, she said:

'And it is worth taking, too!'

'Quite; but it would want money to keep it up.'

The people at the Credit Foncier would not be satisfied. And the
contractors were upon him--four hundred pounds for carpenter's work due
at the end of the month, and he hadn't a penny of it.

The mother, who was putting on the bodice of her dress before the
looking-glass, grew pale and saw that she did so. It was the shiver that
you feel in a duel, when your adversary raises his pistol to take aim.

'You have had the money for the restorations at Mousseaux?'

'Mousseaux! Long ago.'

'And the Rosen tomb?'

'Can't get on. Vedrine still at his statue.'

'Yes, and why must you have Vedrine? Your father warned you against
him.'

'Oh, I know. They can't bear him at the Institute.'

He rose and walked about the room.

'You know me, come. I am a practical man. If I took him and not some
one else to do my statue, you may suppose that I had a reason.' Then
suddenly, turning to his mother:

'You could not let me have fou