a place as attractive to the pride of the artist as to the heart of the
man, the place in all Paris where he liked best to come, because there
all his cravings were satisfied at the same time.

Not only did she learn to discover all his tastes, in order that,
while gratifying them in her own house, she might give him a feeling of
well-being that nothing could replace, but she knew how to create new
tastes, to arouse appetites of all kinds, material and intellectual,
habits of little attentions, of affections, of adoration and flattery!
She tried to charm his eye with elegance, his sense of smell with
perfumes, and his taste with delicate food.

But when she had planted in the soul and in the senses of a selfish
bachelor a multitude of petty, tyrannical needs, when she had become
quite certain that no mistress would trouble herself as she did to watch
over and maintain them, in order to surround him with all the little
pleasures of life, she suddenly feared, as she saw him disgusted with
his own home, always complaining of his solitary life, and, being
unable to come into her home except under all the restraints imposed
by society, going to the club, seeking every means to soften his lonely
lot--she feared lest he thought of marriage.

On some days she suffered so much from all these anxieties that she
longed for old age, to have an end of this anguish and rest in a cooler
and calmer affection.

Years passed, however, without disuniting them. The chain wherewith she
had attached him to her was heavy, and she made new links as the old
ones wore away. But, always solicitous, she watched over the painter's
heart as one guards a child crossing a street full of vehicles, and