She came, then, the following day, with her husband, and afterward
with her daughter, whom the artist seated before a table covered with
picture-books.

Olivier Bertin, following his usual custom, showed himself very
reserved. Fashionable women made him a little uneasy, for he hardly knew
them. He supposed them to be at once immoral and shallow, hypocritical
and dangerous, futile and embarrassing. Among the women of the
demi-monde he had had some passing adventures due to his renown, his
lively wit, his elegant and athletic figure, and his dark and animated
face. He preferred them, too; he liked their free ways and frank speech,
accustomed as he was to the gay and easy manners of the studios and
green-rooms he frequented. He went into the fashionable world for the
glory of it, but his heart was not in it; he enjoyed it through his
vanity, received congratulations and commissions, and played the gallant
before charming ladies who flattered him, but never paid court to any.
As he did not allow himself to indulge in daring pleasantries and spicy
jests in their society, he thought them all prudes, and himself was
considered as having good taste. Whenever one of them came to pose at
his studio, he felt, in spite of any advances she might make to please
him, that disparity of rank which prevents any real unity between
artists and fashionable people, no matter how much they may be thrown
together. Behind the smiles and the admiration which among women are
always a little artificial, he felt the indefinable mental reserve of
the being that judges itself of superior essence. This brought about in
him an abnormal feeling of pride, which showed itself in a bearing of
haughty respect, dissembling the vanity of the parvenu who is treated
as an equal by princes and princesses, who owes to his talent the
honor accorded to others by their birth. It was said of him with slight
surprise: "He is really very well bred!" This surprise, although it