This unexpected superiority in my problematical follower reassured me not a little; still, I was resolved to get to the bottom of the situation, and therefore, after dinner I drew him into one of those tete-a-tetes which the mistress of a house can always bring about.
After talking awhile about Monsieur Marie-Gaston, our mutual friend, the enthusiasms of my dear Louise and my efforts to moderate them, I asked him how soon he intended to send his Saint-Ursula to her destination.
“Everything is ready for her departure,” he replied, “but I want your exeat, madame; will you kindly tell me if you desire me to change her expression?”
“One question in the first place,” I replied: “Will your work suffer by such a change, supposing that I desire it?”
“Probably. If you cut the wings of a bird you hinder its flight.”
“Another question: Is it I, or the other person whom the statue best represents?”
“You, madame; that goes without saying, for you are the present, she the past.”
“But, to desert the past for the present is a bad thing and goes by a bad name, monsieur; and yet you proclaim it with a very easy air.”
“True,” said Monsieur Dorlange, laughing, “but art is ferocious; wherever it sees material for its creations, it pounces upon it desperately.”
“Art,” I replied, “is a great word under which a multitude of things shelter themselves. The other day you told me that circumstances, too long to relate at that moment, had contributed to fix the image of which I was the reflection in your mind, where it has left a vivid memory; was not that enough to excite my curiosity?”