He quitted the tavern with firm step, erect head, bright eye, beating heart, and almost a smile on his lips, murmuring as he went along the refrain of Francine's song-- "Love hovers round my dwelling My door must open be." This refrain in Jacques' mouth was also a recollection, but then it was already a song, and perhaps without suspecting it he took that evening the first step along the road which leads from sorrow to melancholy, and thence onward to forgetfulness.

Alas! Whatever one may wish and whatever one may do the eternal and just law of change wills it so.
Even as the flowers, sprung perhaps from Francine, had sprouted on her tomb the sap of youth stirred in the heart of Jacques, in which the remembrance of the old love awoke new aspirations for new ones.

Besides Jacques belonged to the race of artists and poets who make passion an instrument of art and poetry, and whose mind only shows activity in proportion as it is set in motion by the motive powers of the heart.
With Jacques invention was really the daughter of sentiment, and he put something of himself into the smallest things he did.

He perceived that souvenirs no longer sufficed him, and that, like the millstone which wears itself away when corn runs short, his heart was wearing away for want of emotion.

Work had no longer any charm for him, his power of invention, of yore feverish and spontaneous, now only awoke after much patient effort.