Paris, while at night he gave lectures to working men on Italian
painting and political economy. There was never a week passed
but he was bowled over for twenty-four or forty-eight hours with
an agonizing sick-headache. He spent long hours too with his
fiancée, a girl with no dowry and no looks, but of a loving,
sensitive temper, whom he adored and fully intended to marry the
moment he had five hundred francs to call his own.

Servien could make nothing of the other's temperament, one that
looks upon the world as an immense factory where the good workman
labours, coat off and sleeves rolled up, the sweat pouring from his
brow and a song on his lips. He found it harder still to conceive
a love with which the glamour of the stage or the splendours of
luxurious living had nothing to do. Yet he felt there was something
strong and sensible and true about it all, and craving sympathy
he made Garneret the confidant of his passion, telling the tale
in accents of despair and bitterness, though secretly proud to
be the tortured victim of such fine emotions.

But Garneret expressed no admiration.

"My dear fellow," said he, "you have got all these romantic notions
out of trashy novels. How can you love the woman when you don't
know her?"

How, indeed? Jean Servien did not know; but his nights and days,
the throbbings of his heart, the thoughts that possessed his
mind to the exclusion of all else, everything convinced him that
it was so. He defended himself, talking of mystic influences,
natural affinities, emanations, a divine unity of essence.