While he was answering the respectful questions of the master of the house concerning his brief acquaintance with the dead man, he had been recalling his short stay in the painter’s chamber during the dawn of this same day. Evidently the painter had drunk the poison before he had asked for company, and Luc had been talking to a dying man who was measuring his life by the grains of sand in an hour-glass; for Luc recalled how he had taken up the hour-glass, and seeing that the sands were nearly run through, had abruptly ended the interview. Luc found himself picturing what had happened in the room after he had left it. He had heard the door bolted--but afterwards the dying man had altered that with some change of thought, probably when the idea of his ironical letter occurred to him. “He had a bitter humour,” thought Luc, with a sweet amaze. As for himself, the melancholy, the disgust, and the pity roused in him by the hopeless cynicism of the young painter’s sudden end had not extinguished or even for a second damped the fires of his own ardour; they only burnt the clearer and brighter in contrast with the gloom he had just witnessed in two other human beings--the luxurious, soulless youth and worn-out painter. He felt like a man walking on an upland in the full light of the sun, while below him others struggled through the mists and morasses, shadows and sloughs of a dismal valley, and never lifted their eyes to the sun. He might look down on these blinded people, he might pity, though he could not comfort them; but they could not long trouble him nor put a shade across his bright path. As he sat at the window watching the clean empty street, a very handsome equipage swept round the corner, swinging on its leathers. With a faint flush Luc recognized the liveries and arms of Carola Koklinska, and when the coach drew up before the door his heart gave a little lift into a region that knew not melancholy. He saw one of her servants descending, and on a sudden impulse went down himself. The house was still full of the tragedy, the modest establishment disorganized; the doctor and the magistrate’s clerk were busy in the chamber of the dead man. Luc met the lackey in the doorway, and a sudden confusion seized him that perhaps the Countess was not in the coach, or perhaps had not come to see him. While he hesitated, the servant inquired if he was M. de Vauvenargues. Luc responded, and added, “If your mistress is in the coach, I will come and speak to her.” Then, before the man could answer, he caught sight of the Countess at the coach window, holding back the stamped leather blind. Luc, bare-headed and with the sun shining in his loosely curled fine hair, came to the coach step. “I found out from M. de Biron where you were lodging,” said Carola, “and called on my way back to Paris to leave a message for you, Monsieur.” She spoke in her usual cold, rather precise accents, and her delicate face was rather sad and tired in expression.