But he took care not to utter that word often to her. All he ever granted to her was that she might arrive at something, perhaps, if she studied hard; if she were resolute and yet humble; if she accepted all his corrections and instructions, and did her best to lose that southern accent which would send all Paris into Homeric laughter if it were ever heard upon any stage.
'It could only be permitted,' he added, 'if you were reciting Mireille.'
She did not know what he meant, but she listened to his pure and exquisite pronunciation, and did her uttermost docilely to acquire it, as to obey and execute all his teachings.
Then, when their lesson was over, not seldom he would unbend utterly, and strolling with her through the meadows, or sitting beneath the trelliswork of the porch with the rose leaves falling on his white hair, he would tell her the most wonderful and enchanting of stories, merely drawing all of them from the innumerable treasures of that wonder-horn, his own manifold experiences. He said not a word that would hurt her. All that would be learnt soon enough.
'J'en ai vu tant!' he would think often as he left the Croix Blanche in the warm evenings. He had seen the world devour so many, like the dragons that were fed on white flesh. But he fancied she would be one of those who bind the dragon, like St. Marguerite, and make it follow them slavishly.
She had strength in her, the strength of the old mountain race of Bérarde. He knew nothing of those dead people who had ruled land and sea in the dark ages, and perished finally under the axe on the scaffold; but there were a vitality and a force in her which seemed to him destined to conquer where weaker natures gave way and failed.
Provided only, he thought, provided only that she would have as many passions as there were grains of sand on her own sea-shores, but amongst them all no real love.
Passion is the most useful of teachers to any artist; that he knew; but love is the destruction of all art. Mademoiselle Mars lived through a blaze of glory; Adrienne Lecouvreur died in her youth. Rosselin did not trouble himself about conventional morality. He took the world as he had found it. He respected this child's supreme innocence, and would not have sullied it by a breath; but, casting her horoscope, he would have given her the heart of Rachel, not that of Desclée, if he had had the power. It is better to be the tigress which preys than the hind which bleeds.
He was no cynic; he only knew the world well, and well knew what the world makes of women.