ead and
I have hardly given her a tear. I had to pay my calls and "beg for the
Academie," as that fellow says. The thing takes the very life out of me.
It's perfectly maddening.'

In the savage plainness of these words and the excited ring of the
angry voice, the sculptor could scarcely recognise his gentle courteous
friend, to whom mere living used to be a joy. The absent expression in
his eye, the anxious wrinkle on his brow, and the heat of the hand which
grasped Vedrine's, all betrayed his subjection to one absorbing passion,
one fixed idea. But the meeting with Vedrine seemed to have relieved his
nerves, and he asked affectionately, 'Well, what are you doing, and
how are you getting on? How is your wife? And the children?' His friend
answered with his quiet smile. All were doing well, thank God. The
little girl was just going to be weaned. The boy continued to fulfil his
function of looking lovely, and was waiting impatiently for old Rehu's
centenary. As for himself, he was hard at work. He had two pictures in
the Salon this year, not badly hung, and not badly sold. On the other
hand a creditor, not less unwise than hard, had taken possession of the
Knight, and he had passed from stage to stage, first lying much in
the way in a fine suite of rooms on the ground floor in the Rue St.
Petersbourg, then packed off to a stable at Batignolles, and now
shivering under a cowkeeper's shed at Levallois, where from time to time
the sculptor and his family went to pay him a visit.

'So much for glory!' added Vedrine with a laugh, as the voice of the
usher called for the witness Astier-Rehu. The head of the Permanent
Secretary showed for a moment, outlined against the dusty light of
the court-room, upright and steady; but his back he had forgotten to
control, and the shiver of his broad shoulders betrayed intense feeling.
'Poor man,' muttered the sculptor, 'he's got heavy trials to go through.
This autograph business, and his son's marriage.'

'Is Paul Astier married?'

'Yes, three days ago, to the Duchess Padovani. It was a sort of
morganatic marriage, with no guests but the young man's mamma and the
four witnesses. I was one of them, as you may suppose, for a freak of
fate seems to associate me with all the acts and deeds of the Astier
family.'

And Vedrine described the sorrowful surprise with which in the Mayor's
room he had seen the Duchess Padovani appear, deathly pale, as haughty
as ever, but withered and heart-bro