Jacques, too, in his way is a force of nature. His artistic vitality will always overwhelm me, and it did so this evening in proportion with such a hypnotism. For between the formidable exterminating monster which waves its column of smoke above the devastated Pompeii, and the inoffensive cerebral volcano whose smoky eruptions overflow into yellow volumes, or crystallize into three, four or five act plays, the difference is really very great. Without ironical extenuation such a comparison would be rather comic. Whether justified or not, I gave myself up to this sensation without discussion. Wearied as I was by my day of moral lassitude, was not this way of spending my evening an unexpected pleasure? The comedy might interest me, for this foppish egoist had great talent. The actress might be pretty, although doubtless Jacques’ fatuity had transformed for my astonishment a Conservatoire fool into a bird of paradise. I had too often accompanied Claude Larcher into Colette Rigaud’s dressing-room not to know these footlight-mistresses and their vulgarity. But there are always exceptions, and Madam Pierre de Bonnivet might be an exception to her class, although a rich woman who collects celebrities was hardly likely to please me. In any case, it was worth the trouble of accompanying Molan to the Vaudeville simply to have the pleasure of seeing him enter the theatre. “We will go in by the stage door,” he said “in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. It is very charming here in the two little stage boxes, and upon the stage behind the curtain. We can get to the boxes through the wings, if either of them is vacant.” He got out of the carriage before me as he said this; he greeted the door-keeper and went through a doorway and up a staircase with the gait which is unique in the world: that of the fashionable author visiting his paper, his editor, or his theatre. Every gesture seemed to say, “The house belongs to me”; his foot was lighter, his cane waved in his hand, and his shoulders involuntarily swaggered. These things are in themselves of no importance, but we painters who have studied portraiture make it our business to seize upon these trifles. The theatre staff, when they saw “their author” pass, displayed inexpressible and unconscious respect. How I should like to inspire some picture dealer with like respect! When shall I have in displaying my pictures to a friend, the peaceful and innocently puerile pride which Jacques displayed in opening for me the door of one of the stage boxes, fortunately unoccupied, where we sat down while he whispered to me—