nothing to say, gazed at Colonel Czerni-Georges and at the famous
painter Schinner, and wondered how he could transform himself into
somebody. But a youth of nineteen, kept at home all his life, and
going for two weeks only into the country, what could he be, or do, or
say? However, the Alicante had got into his head, and his vanity was
boiling in his veins; so when the famous Schinner allowed a romantic
adventure to be guessed at in which the danger seemed as great as the
pleasure, he fastened his eyes, sparkling with wrath and envy, upon
that hero.

"Yes," said the count, with a credulous air, "a man must love a woman
well to make such sacrifices."

"What sacrifices?" demanded Mistigris.

"Don't you know, my little friend, that a ceiling painted by so great
a master as yours is worth its weight in gold?" replied the count. "If
the civil list paid you, as it did, thirty thousand francs for each of
those rooms in the Louvre," he continued, addressing Schinner, "a
bourgeois,--as you call us in the studios--ought certainly to pay you
twenty thousand. Whereas, if you go to this chateau as a humble
decorator, you will not get two thousand."

"The money is not the greatest loss," said Mistigris. "The work is
sure to be a masterpiece, but he can't sign it, you know, for fear of
compromising _her_."

"Ah! I'd return all my crosses to the sovereigns who gave them to me
for the devotion that youth can win," said the count.