“Would it be indiscreet, madame, to ask you why?” timidly inquired a young man with a badly-tied cravat.
“Because I am afraid he is right in his opinions. I wish to pass gaily through life; and if we believe what he says, life would be such a serious affair, we should have to think. Really, to hear him, we can imagine ourselves surrounded with mysteries.”
VIII.
“I wish to see and study your picture of Cain. I was going to say your portrait of Cain,” said the doctor to the painter; “for it seems to me that you must have known him personally, from the manner in which you have spoken to me of him.”
“Perhaps I have known him,” [pg 708] said Paul. “At any rate, come!” And they entered the studio.
Arrived before the picture, the doctor started back in surprise.
The portrait of Cain was that of the baron, horrible in the resemblance.
There was on that face the coldness of the criminal and the horror of the cursed. The coldness did not impair the horror, nor the horror the coldness; and from the mouth of Cain the spectator might expect to hear the words that S. Bridget heard from the mouth of Satan when he said to God:
“O Judge! I am coldness itself.”
Indifference and despair were in those eyes, on those lips, and on that brow. But the despair was not heartrending, for repentance was wanting, and this despair even appeared expiatory, like justice eating its bread.