"Forgive me, my Gillette," cried the painter, throwing himself at her feet. "I prefer to be beloved rather than famous. In my eyes you are fairer than wealth and honours. Go, throw away my brushes, burn these sketches. I have made a mistake. My vocation is to love you. I am no painter, I am a lover. Away with art and all its secrets!" She gazed admiringly at him, happy, overjoyed. She was queen; she felt instinctively that art was forgotten for her, and cast at her feet like a grain of incense. "And yet it is only an old man," continued Poussin. "He could see only the woman in you--you are so perfect!" "One must needs love," she cried, ready to sacrifice the scruples of her love to repay her lover for all the sacrifices that he made for her. "But," she added, "it would be my ruin. Ah! ruin for you--yes, that would be very lovely! But you will forget me! Oh! what a wicked idea this is of yours!" "I conceived the idea, and I love you," he said with a sort of contrition; "but am I for that reason a villain?" "Let us consult Father Hardouin," she said. "Oh, no! let it be a secret between us." "Very good, I will go. But do not be there," she cried. "Stay at the door, with your dagger drawn; if I cry out, come in and kill the painter." With no eyes for aught but his art, Poussin threw his arms about Gillette. "He no longer loves me!" thought Gillette, when she was alone. Already she repented her decision. But she was soon seized by a terror more painful than her regret; she strove to drive away a shocking thought that stole into her mind. She fancied that she already loved the painter less, because she suspected that he was less estimable than she had hitherto believed. II CATHERINE LESCAULT Three months after the meeting of Poussin and Porbus, the latter went to see Master Frenhofer. The old man was then in the depths of one of those periods of profound and sudden discouragement, the cause of which, if we are to believe the mathematicians of medicine, consists in bad digestion, the wind, the heat, or some disturbance in the hypochondriac region; and, according to the spiritualists, in the imperfection of our moral nature. The good man had simply tired himself out in finishing his mysterious picture. He was languidly reclining in an enormous chair of carved oak, upholstered in black leather; and without changing his depressed attitude, he darted at Porbus the glance of a man who had determined to make the best of his ennui. "Well, master," said Porbus, "was the ultramarine, that you went to Bruges for, very bad? Haven't you been able to grind our new white? Is your oil poor, or are your brushes unmanageable?"