The poet, meantime, left to himself, had given way to a current of thought out of which had come that secondary impulse which Monsieur de Talleyrand valued so much.

The first impulse is the voice of nature, the second that of society.
"A girl worth six millions," he thought to himself, "and my eyes were not able to see that gold shining in the darkness! With such a fortune I could be peer of France, count, marquis, ambassador.

I've replied to middle-class women and silly women, and crafty creatures who wanted autographs; I've tired myself to death with masked-ball intrigues,--at the very moment when God was sending me a soul of price, an angel with golden wings! Bah! I'll make a poem on it, and perhaps the chance will come again.

Heavens! the luck of that little La Briere,--strutting about in my lustre--plagiarism! I'm the cast and he's to be the statue, is he?
It is the old fable of Bertrand and Raton.

Six millions, a beauty, a Mignon de La Bastie, an aristocratic divinity loving poetry and the poet! And I, who showed my muscle as man of the world, who did those Alcide exercises to silence by moral force the champion of physical force, that old soldier with a heart, that friend of this very young girl, whom he'll now go and tell that I have a heart of iron!--I, to play Napoleon when I ought to have been seraphic! Good heavens! True, I shall have my friend.