Thereupon it seemed to him that, through the delicate and penetrating odor of musk exhaled by the pink-tipped petals of that pretty little flower, he saw palpable images take shape and gather about him. Women, lights, flowers, gushing waters, diamonds with a bluish gleam; and with the things which seemed real, fanciful things were mingled as in a dream. Lovely dancing-girls of antique times, whom Michel had painted on the ceiling, stood forth gracefully from the canvas, and, raising their azure and purple tunics above their knees, glided through the crowd, and cast upon him as they passed lewd glances and mysterious smiles. Drunk with desire, he followed them, and lost them, and found them again, seizing one by her floating girdle, another by her transparent _peplum_, but exhausting himself in vain efforts, in vain entreaties, to detain them and give them substance. Then a white female passed slowly and took sole possession of his vagrant passion. She stopped in front of him and gazed at him, at first with stony eyes, which gradually became animated and ended by flashing flames, whereby he felt that he was being consumed. Lying motionless at her feet, he saw her stoop over him. He fancied that he felt her breath upon his brow; but instantly the giddy band of Latin harlots entangled him in a network of multi-colored tunics and whirled him upward toward the ceiling. Then he found himself alone on his ladder, smeared with paint, covered with dirt, exhausted, gasping for breath, in a ghastly solitude, dimly lighted by a vague gleam of daylight. Silence hovered over the cold, deserted rooms; naught remained of his vision save a little broken flower, whose fragrance he had exhausted by inhaling it. This hallucination became so painful that Michel, in terror, pushed the cyclamen away once more, thinking that there must be something soporific or poisonous in its exhalations. But he could not make up his mind to destroy it. He placed it in a glass of water and opened his window again. "Why suffer thus without reason and without any object?" he said to himself; "is it a woman's glance, or the distant view of a great fête, that makes my disordered imagination run riot thus? Very well! if the mad creature is untamable, let her have her way; doubtless the spectacle of what really is will either extinguish her frenzy or furnish it with fresh food. I shall either become calm, or suffer in some new way; what does it matter!" "What is the trouble, that you are talking to yourself so, Michel?" said a soft voice, while at the same time the door of his little chamber opened behind him. And Michel, turning his head, saw his little sister Mila, who approached him on tiptoe, with bare feet and her body wrapped in a _piddemia_--a brown cloak worn by the women of the people. No one in the world was so pretty, so sweet, and so lovable as Mila. Michel had always loved her dearly. And yet her appearance at that moment caused him some vexation.