being in love. What are you? What do you do?"

He answered frankly enough:

"My father is in trade; he is looking out for a post for me."

The actress understood the truth; here was a little bourgeois,
living contentedly on next to nothing, reared in habits of
penuriousness, a hidebound, mean creature, like the petty tradesmen
who used to come to her whining for their bills, and whom she
encountered of a Sunday in smart new coats in the Meudon woods.
She could feel no interest in him, such as he might have inspired,
whether as a rich man with bouquets and jewels to offer her,
or a poor wretch so hungry and miserable as to bring tears to
her eyes. Dazzle her eyes or stir her compassion, it must be
one or the other! Then she was used to young fellows of a more
enterprising mettle. She thought of a young violinist at the
Conservatoire who, one evening, when she was entertaining company,
had pretended to leave with the rest and concealed himself in her
dressing-room; as she was undressing, thinking herself alone, he
burst from his hiding-place, a bottle of champagne in either hand
and laughing like a mad-man. The new lover was less diverting.
However, she asked him his name.

"Jean Servien."

"Well, Monsieur Jean Servien, I am sorry, very sorry, to have
made you unhappy, as you say you are."

At the bottom of her heart she was more flattered than grieved