The unfortunate part of it all is that M. Xavier
had no feeling. He was not poetical, like M.
Georges. He did not vouchsafe me the slightest
attention. Never did he say to me a kind and
touching word, as lovers do in books and plays.
Moreover, he liked nothing that I liked; he did
not like flowers, with the exception of the big
carnations with which he adorned the buttonhole of
his coat. Yet it is so good to whisper to each
other things that caress the heart, to exchange dis-interested kisses, to gaze for eternities into one
another's eyes. But men are such coarse creatures;
they do not feel these joys,^these joys so pure and
blue. And it is a great pity. M. Xavier knew
nothing but vice, found pleasure only in debauchery. In love all that was not vice and debauchery
bored him.
"Oh! no, you know, that makes me very tired. I have supped on poetry. The little blue flower ... we must leave that to papa."
To him I was always an impersonal creature, the domestic to whom he gave orders and whom he maltreated in the exercise of his authority as master, and with his boyish cynical jests. And he often said to me, with a laugh in the corner of his mouth, — a frightful laugh that wounded and humiliated me:
"And papa? Really, you are not yet intimate with papa? You astonish me."
