It was his mother's room. He kept it intact in its past. Uninhabited
for nine years, the, room had not the air of being resigned to its
solitude. The mirror waited for the old lady's glance, and on the onyx
clock a pensive Sappho was lonely because she did not hear the noise of
the pendulum.

There were two portraits on the walls. One by Ricard represented
Philippe Dechartre, very pale, with rumpled hair, and eyes lost in a
romantic dream. The other showed a middle-aged woman, almost beautiful
in her ardent slightness. It was Madame Philippe Dechartre.

"My poor mother's room is like me," said Jacques; "it remembers."

"You resemble your mother," said Therese; "you have her eyes. Paul Vence
told me she adored you."

"Yes," he replied, smilingly. "My mother was excellent, intelligent,
exquisite, marvellously absurd. Her madness was maternal love. She did
not give me a moment of rest. She tormented herself and tormented me."

Therese looked at a bronze figure by Carpeaux, placed on the chiffonier.

"You recognize," said Dechartre, "the Prince Imperial by his ears, which
are like the wings of a zephyr, and which enliven his cold visage. This
bronze is a gift of Napoleon III. My parents went to Compiegne. My
father, while the court was at Fontainebleau, made the plan of the
castle, and designed the gallery. In the morning the Emperor would come,
in his frock-coat, and smoking his meerschaum pipe, to sit near him like
a penguin on a rock. At that time I went to day-school. I listened to
his stories at table, and I have not forgotten them. The Emperor stayed