It will be better than a caprice, it will be something pure that you can
keep in your heart. Do not let us spoil the remembrance of our
childhood, Monsieur Amedee, and let us part good friends."

Before the young man could find a reply, the bell pealed again, and
Rosine gave Amedee a parting smile, lightly kissing the tips of her
fingers, and disappeared behind the doer, which fell together, with a
loud bang. The poet's first movements was one of rage. Giddy weather-
cock of a woman! But he had hardly taken twenty steps upon the sidewalk
before he said to himself, with a feeling of remorse, "She was right!"
He thought that this poor girl had kept in one corner of her heart a
shadow of reserve and modesty, and he was happy to feel rise within him a
sacred respect for woman!

Amedee, my good fellow, you are quite worthless as a man of pleasure.
You had better give it up!




CHAPTER XII

SOCIAL TRIUMPHS

For one month now Amedee Violette's volume of verses, entitled Poems from
Nature, had embellished with its pale-blue covers the shelves of the
book-shops. The commotion raised by the book's success, and the
favorable criticisms given by the journals, had not yet calmed down at
the Cafe de Seville.