"What next?" He had risen, and was speaking with unusual vehemence.
"I once knew some one like you, whose first passion, rash, but deep as
yours would be, broke his heart forever. The heart, my friend, is liable
to break, and can not be mended like china."

Lampron's mother interrupted him afresh, reproachfully.

"He came to wish you a happy birthday, my child."

"One day, mother, is as good as another to listen to good advice.
Besides, I am only talking of one of my friends. 'Tis but a short story,
Fabien, and instructive. I will give it you in very few words. My
friend was very young and enthusiastic. He was on his way through the
galleries of Italy, brush in hand, his heart full of the ceaseless song
of youth in holiday. The world never had played him false, nor balked
him. He made the future bend to the fancy of his dreams. He seldom
descended among common men from those loftier realms where the
contemplation of endless masterpieces kept his spirit as on wings.
He admired, copied, filled his soul with the glowing beauty of Italian
landscape and Italian art. But one day, without reflection, without
knowledge, without foresight, he was rash enough to fall in love with a
girl of noble birth whose portrait he was painting; to speak to her and
to win her love. He thought then, in the silly innocence of his youth,
that art abridges all distance and that love effaces it. Crueller
nonsense never was uttered, my poor Fabien. He soon found this; he tried
to struggle against the parent's denial, against himself, against her,
powerless in all alike, beaten at every point.... The end was-- Do you
care to learn the end? The girl was carried off, struck down by a brief
illness, soon dead; the man, hurled out of heaven, bruised, a fugitive