“I cannot! I cannot!” he murmured, throwing himself back in his arm-chair and passing his handkerchief over his forehead. Jack turned to his mother in amazement. “Go, dear Jack. Take him away, Constant.” And while Madame de Barancy sought to conciliate her poet, the child returned with a heavy heart to his school; and in the cold dormitory, as he thought of the professor installed in his mother’s chimney-corner, said to himself, “He is very comfortable there. I wonder how long he means to stay!” In D’Argenton’s exclamation and in his repugnance to Jack, there was certainly some acting, but there was also real feeling. He was very jealous of the child, who represented to him Ida’s past, not that the poet was profoundly in love with the countess. He, on the contrary, loved himself in her, and, Narcissus-like, worshipped his own image which he saw reflected in her clear eyes. But D’Argenton would have preferred to be the first to disturb those depths. But these regrets were useless, though Ida shared them. “Why did I not know him earlier?” she said to herself over and over again. “She ought to understand by this time,” said D’Argenton, sulkily, “that I do not wish to see that boy.” But even for her poet’s sake Ida could not keep her child away from her entirely. She did not, however, go so often to the academy, nor summon Jack from school, as she had done, and this change was by no means the smallest of the sacrifices she was called upon to make. As to the hotel she occupied, her carriage, and the luxury in which she lived, she was ready to abandon them all at a word from D’Argenton. “You will see,” she said, “how I can aid you. I can work, and, besides, I shall not be completely penniless.” But D’Argenton hesitated. He was, notwithstanding his apparent enthusiasm and recklessness, extremely methodical and clear-headed. “No, we will wait a while. I shall be rich some day, and then—” He alluded to his old aunt, who now made him an allowance and whose heir he would unquestionably be. “The good old lady was very old,” he added. And the two, Ida and D’Argenton, made a great many plans for the days that were to come. They would live in the country, but not so far away from Paris that they would be deprived of its advantages. They would have a little cottage, over the door of which should be inscribed this legend: _Parva domus, magna quies_. There he could work, write a book—a novel, and later, a volume of poems. The titles of both were in readiness, but that was all. Then the publishers would make him offers; he would be famous, perhaps a member of the Academy—though, to be sure, that institution was mildewed, moth-eaten, and ready to fall.