I go to
Havre to-morrow, and I shall expect you three days later. Adieu,
monsieur."
Poor La Briere went back to Canalis with a dragging step. The poet,
meantime, left to himself, had given way to a current of thought out
of which had come that secondary impulse which Monsieur de Talleyrand
valued so much. The first impulse is the voice of nature, the second
that of society.
"A girl worth six millions," he thought to himself, "and my eyes were
not able to see that gold shining in the darkness! With such a fortune
I could be peer of France, count, marquis, ambassador. I've replied to
middle-class women and silly women, and crafty creatures who wanted
autographs; I've tired myself to death with masked-ball intrigues,--at
the very moment when God was sending me a soul of price, an angel with
golden wings! Bah! I'll make a poem on it, and perhaps the chance will
come again. Heavens! the luck of that little La Briere,--strutting
about in my lustre--plagiarism! I'm the cast and he's to be the
statue, is he? It is the old fable of Bertrand and Raton. Six
millions, a beauty, a Mignon de La Bastie, an aristocratic divinity
loving poetry and the poet! And I, who showed my muscle as man of the
world, who did those Alcide exercises to silence by moral force the
champion of physical force, that old soldier with a heart, that friend
of this very young girl, whom he'll now go and tell that I have a
heart of iron!--I, to play Napoleon when I ought to have been
seraphic! Good heavens! True, I shall have my friend.
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