She stopped, as if to banish these too melancholy recollections. On hearing the way in which she pronounced her father's name one must needs have been a monster of distrust not to believe that the incurable wound caused by the death of that celebrated minister bled afresh every time she thought of him. René was, nevertheless, a little surprised at the tenor of her words. He remembered that one of the last things Sainte-Beuve had written was a philippic against a copyright bill proposed by Bois-Dauffin, and he had always looked upon the statesman as one of the sworn enemies of literature, of whom there are thousands in the political world. He, moreover, had a profound horror of the conventional idealism to which Madame Moraines had alluded. In poetry, his favourite author was Théophile Gautier, both on account of his construction and the precision of his metaphors--in prose, the severe Flaubert, on account of his wonderfully clear style, and his lack of all mannerisms. It pleased him, however, that Suzanne should see in her father a liberal protector of literature, for it proved the depth of her filial piety. He was also pleased to find that she cherished an ideal of his art almost childish in its simplicity. Such a comprehension of beauty, if sincere, showed real inner purity. If sincere! René would have disdained to entertain such a doubt in the presence of this ethereal angel with her dreamy eyes. He stammered out some phrase as vague as that in which Madame Moraines had expressed her idea, and spoke only of woman's fine judgment in literature--he, the worshipper not only of Gautier, but of Baudelaire! Was she quick enough to hear by his tone of voice that she was on a wrong tack? Or did the profound ignorance in which, like so many Society women, she was content to dwell--never reading anything beyond a paper and a few third-rate novels when travelling--make it impossible for her to keep up a conversation of this order and quote names in support of her ideas? In any case, she soon dropped this dangerous subject, and quickly passed from the ideal in art to another more feminine problem, the ideal in love. In merely uttering the word 'love,' which, in itself, contains so much that is contradictory, she managed to assume such an air of modesty that René felt as if he had been taken into her confidence. It was evidently a subject upon which this woman, so far above all ideas of gallantry, did not care to enter unless she was in full sympathy with her hearer.