He returned to the Chalet, where the Pyrenees hounds barked at him
till he was forced to relinquish the pleasure of gazing at Modeste's
windows. In love, such things are of no more account to the lover than
the work which is covered by the last layer of color is to an artist;
yet they make up the whole of love, just as the hidden toil is the
whole of art. Out of them arise the great painter and the true lover
whom the woman and the public end, sometimes too late, by adoring.
"Well then!" he cried aloud, "I will stay, I will suffer, I will love
her for myself only, in solitude. Modeste shall be my sun, my life; I
will breathe with her breath, rejoice in her joys and bear her griefs,
be she even the wife of that egoist, Canalis."
"That's what I call loving, monsieur," said a voice which came from a
shrub by the side of the road. "Ha, ha, so all the world is in love
with Mademoiselle de La Bastie?"
And Butscha suddenly appeared and looked at La Briere. La Briere
checked his anger when, by the light of the moon, he saw the dwarf,
and he made a few steps without replying.
"Soldiers who serve in the same company ought to be good comrades,"
remarked Butscha.
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