Moreover, he was afraid of everybody now because he was afraid of the princess. She had looked at him in a way that had completely upset him; but she had said nothing to him; not a word of praise or encouragement had accompanied that glance, which was more than kind, it is true, but for that very reason incomprehensible. And suppose he had been mistaken touching the expression of her face! suppose that, when she thus fixed her lovely, joy-laden eyes upon him, she was thinking of some entirely different person--her lover, perhaps, for she must have a lover, whatever Magnani might say! At the bare idea Michel felt faint and sick; he fancied that he saw the princess leaning on the arm of the fortunate mortal for whose sake she pretended to entertain no thought of marriage. They were glancing absently at the young painter's work, and smiling as they looked into each other's eyes, as if to say: "What does it matter to us? nothing is beautiful, nothing exists for us, except ourselves." Weary of suffering so entirely without reason, Michel thought to conquer and tranquillize himself by adopting a superb resolution. "I will go to bed," he said to himself, "and sleep like a prince, like a hero, while people are criticising me, disputing and perhaps getting excited about me in yonder palace. To-morrow morning, father will come and wake me, and tell me whether I have won the laurel wreath or have been hissed. What does it matter to me, after all?" It mattered so little to him, in very truth, that, instead of undressing, he dressed to go to the ball. In a most extraordinary fit of abstraction, he arranged his beautiful hair, which would have been a bit too long for a strictly fashionable patrician, but which formed a beautiful frame for his intelligent and impassioned face. He removed with the greatest care all traces of toil; he donned his finest linen and his best clothes; and when he had glanced at his little mirror, he decided, and with good reason, that no guest at the princess's ball would present a more distinguished figure than he. Having thus prepared for bed, he left the house, and when he had taken ten steps out of doors, he discovered that an inexplicable preoccupation was leading him in the direction of the Palmarosa palace. Indignant with himself, he returned, took off his coat, tossed it on the bed, opened his window and sat beside it, torn between the heroic determination to retire and the irresistible temptation to go and witness the fête. The countless lights of the palace twinkled before his eyes, the notes of the orchestra reached his ears through the echoing night. Carriages were rolling in all directions; no one was asleep in the city or the outlying country. Indeed, it was not nine o'clock, and Michel felt little inclined to sleep. He closed his window and started to take up a book; but the cyclamen, which he had tossed upon the table in an outburst of anger against himself, was the only object within his reach.