Porbus hesitated and said nothing, but there was such intolerable anxiety in the old man’s white face that he pointed to the easel.
“Look!” he said.
Frenhofer looked for a moment at his picture, and staggered back.
“Nothing! nothing! After ten years of work....” He sat down and wept.
“So I am a dotard, a madman, I have neither talent nor power! I am only a rich man, who works for his own pleasure, and makes no progress. I have done nothing after all!”
He looked through his tears at his picture. Suddenly he rose and stood proudly before the two painters.
“By the body and blood of Christ,” he cried with flashing eyes, “you are jealous! You would have me think that my picture is a failure because you want to steal her from me! Ah! I see her, I see her,” he cried “she is marvelously beautiful....”
At that moment Poussin heard the sound of weeping; Gillette was crouching forgotten in a corner. All at once the painter once more became the lover. “What is it, my angel?” he asked her.
“Kill me!” she sobbed. “I must be a vile thing if I love you still, for I despise you.... I admire you, and I hate you! I love you, and I feel that I hate you even now!”
While Gillette’s words sounded in Poussin’s ears, Frenhofer drew a green serge covering over his “Catherine” with the sober deliberation of a jeweler who locks his drawers when he suspects his visitors to be expert thieves. He gave the two painters a profoundly astute glance that expressed to the full his suspicions and his contempt for them, saw them out of his studio with impetuous haste and in silence, until from the threshold of his house he bade them “Good-by, my young friends!”