A long burst of laughter, dry and creaky like an old man's laugh, suddenly interrupted him. Slightly startled, Guillardin glanced around the room. He was alone, quite alone, tête-à-tête with his green coat, the ghost of an Academician solemnly spread out opposite him, on the other side of the fire. And still the insolent laugh rang on. Then as he looked at it more intently, the sculptor almost fancied that his coat was no longer in the place where he had put it, but really seated in the arm-chair, with tails turned up, and sleeves resting on the arms of the chair, the fronts puffed out with an appearance of life. Incredible as it may seem, it was this thing that was laughing. Yes, it was from this singular green coat that arose the uncontrollable fits of laughter by which it was agitated, shaken and convulsed, causing it to jerk its tails, throw itself back in the chair, and at moments place its two sleeves against its sides, as though to check this supernatural and inextinguishable excess of mirth. At the same time, a feeble voice, sly and mischievous, could be heard saying between two hiccups: "Oh dear, oh dear, how it hurts one to laugh like this! How it hurts one to laugh like this!" "Who the devil is there, for mercy's sake?" asked the poor Academician with wide staring eyes.
The voice continued still more slyly and mischievously:
"But it's I, Monsieur Guillardin, I, your palm-embroidered coat, waiting for you to start for the reception. I must crave pardon for having so unseasonably interrupted your musing; but really it is too funny to hear you talk of your talent! I could not restrain myself. Come, you can't be serious? Can you conscientiously believe that your talent has sufficed to raise you so rapidly to the point you have attained in life; that it has given you all you possess: honours, position, fame, fortune? Do you really think that possible, Guillardin? Examine yourself, my dear friend, before answering; go down, far, far down, into your inmost conscience. Now, answer me? Don't you see you dare not?"
"And yet," stammered Guillardin, with comical hesitation, "I've.... I've worked a great deal."
"Oh yes, a great deal, you have fagged tremendously. You are a toiler, a drudge, you knock off a great deal of work. You count your task by the hour, like a cabdriver. But the spark, my dear boy, which, like a golden bee flits through the brain of the true artist, and emits from its wings both light and music, when has it ever visited you? Not once, and you are well aware of it. It has always frightened you, that divine little bee! And yet it is this only that gives real talent. Ah! I know many who also work, but very differently from you, with all the anxiety and fever of sincere research, and yet who will never reach the point you have attained. Look here, acknowledge this much, now we are alone. Your one talent has been marrying a pretty woman."
"Monsieur!" interrupted Guillardin, turning purple. The voice proceeded unchanged: "Ah well! This burst of indignation is a good sign. It proves to me what all the world knows indeed; that you are certainly more fool than knave. Come, come, you need not roll such furious eyes at me. In the first place, if you touch me, if you make the least crease or tear in me, it will be impossible to go to the reception to-day, and then, what will Madame Guillardin say? For after all, it is to her that all the glory of this great day is due.
It is she whom the five Academies are about to receive, and I can assure you that if I appeared at the Institut on her pretty person, still so elegant and slender notwithstanding her age, I should cut a very different figure than with you. Confound it, Monsieur Guillardin, we must look facts in the face! You owe everything to that woman; everything, your house, your forty thousand francs (sixteen hundred pounds) a year, your cross of the Legion of Honour, your laurels, your medals."
And with the gesture of a one-armed man, the green coat, with its empty embroidered sleeve, pointed out to the unfortunate sculptor the glorious insignia hung up on the walls of his alcove. Then, as though wishing the better to torment his victim, to assume every aspect, and every attitude, the cruel coat drew nearer the fire, and leaning forward on his arm-chair with a little old-fashioned and confidential air, he spoke familiarly, in the tone of a long-established intimacy: