Perhaps, too, the sudden admiration of the world for his works, elegant,
correct, and full of distinctions, influenced his nature and prevented
him from becoming what he naturally might have been. Since the triumph
of his first success, the desire to please always made him anxious,
without his being conscious of it; it influenced his actions and
weakened his convictions. This desire to please was apparent in him in
many ways, and had contributed much to his glory.

His grace of manner, all his habits of life, the care he devoted to
his person, his long-standing reputation for strength and agility as
a swordsman and an equestrian, had added further attractions to his
steadily growing fame. After his _Cleopatra_, the first picture that
had made him illustrious, Paris suddenly became enamored of him,
adopted him, made a pet of him; and all at once he became one of those
brilliant, fashionable artists one meets in the Bois, for whose presence
hostesses maneuver, and whom the Institute welcomes thenceforth. He had
entered it as a conqueror, with the approval of all Paris.

Thus Fortune had led him to the beginning of old age, coddling and
caressing him.

Under the influence of the beautiful day, which he knew was glowing
without, Bertin sought a poetic subject. He felt somewhat dreamy,
however, after his breakfast and his cigarette; he pondered awhile,
gazing into space, in fancy sketching rapidly against the blue sky the
figures of graceful women in the Bois or on the sidewalk of a street,
lovers by the water--all the pleasing fancies in which his thoughts
reveled. The changing images stood out against the bright sky, vague and
fleeting in the hallucination of his eye, while the swallows, darting
through space in ceaseless flight, seemed trying to efface them as if