The nymphs of the tapestries smiled vainly in their faded beauty at the guests, who did not see them. Madame Martin served the coffee with her young cousin, Madame Belleme de Saint-Nom. She complimented Paul Vence on what he had said at the table. "You talked of Napoleon with a freedom of mind that is rare in the conversations I hear. I have noticed that children, when they are handsome, look, when they pout, like Napoleon at Waterloo. You have made me feel the profound reasons for this similarity." Then, turning toward Dechartre: "Do you like Napoleon?" "Madame, I do not like the Revolution. And Napoleon is the Revolution in boots." "Monsieur Dechartre, why did you not say this at dinner? But I see you prefer to be witty only in tete-a-tetes." Count Martin-Belleme escorted the men to the smoking-room. Paul Vence alone remained with the women. Princess Seniavine asked him if he had finished his novel, and what was the subject of it. It was a study in which he tried to reach the truth through a series of plausible conditions. "Thus," he said, "the novel acquires a moral force which history, in its heavy frivolity, never had." She inquired whether the book was written for women. He said it was not. "You are wrong, Monsieur Vence, not to write for women. A superior man can do nothing else for them." He wished to know what gave her that idea. "Because I see that all the intelligent women love fools." "Who bore them." "Certainly! But superior men would weary them more. They would have more resources to employ in boring them. But tell me the subject of your novel." "Do you insist?" "Oh, I insist upon nothing." "Well, I will tell you. It is a study of popular manners; the history of a young workman, sober and chaste, as handsome as a girl, with the mind of a virgin, a sensitive soul. He is a carver, and works well. At night, near his mother, whom he loves, he studies, he reads books. In his mind, simple and receptive, ideas lodge themselves like bullets in a wall. He has no desires. He has neither the passions nor the vices that attach us to life. He is solitary and pure. Endowed with strong virtues, he becomes conceited. He lives among miserable people. He sees suffering. He has devotion without humanity. He has that sort of cold charity which is called altruism. He is not human because he is not sensual." "Oh! One must be sensual to be human?" "Certainly, Madame. True pity, like tenderness, comes from the heart. He is not intelligent enough to doubt. He believes what he has read. And he has read that to establish universal happiness society must be destroyed. Thirst for martyrdom devours him. One morning, having kissed his mother, he goes out; he watches for the socialist deputy of his district, sees him, throws himself on him, and buries a poniard in his breast. Long live anarchy! He is arrested, measured, photographed, questioned, judged, condemned to death, and guillotined. That is my novel."