_Stretched at full length, on the great divan of a studio, cigar in
mouth, two friends--a poet and a painter--were talking together one
evening after dinner_.
_It was the hour of confidences and effusion. The lamp burned softly
beneath its shade, limiting its circle of light to the intimacy of the
conversation, leaving scarcely distinct the capricious luxury of the
vast walls, cumbered with canvases, hangings, panoplies, surmounted by a
glass roof through which the sombre blue shades of the night penetrated
unhindered. The portrait of a woman, leaning slightly forward, as if to
listen, alone stood out a little from the shadow; young with intelligent
eyes, a grave and sweet mouth and a spirituel smile which seemed to
defend the husband's easel from fools and disparagers. A low chair
pushed away from the fire, two little blue shoes lying on the carpet,
indicated also the presence of a child in the house; and indeed from the
next room, within which mother and child had but just disappeared,
came occasional bursts of soft laughter, of childish babble; the
pretty flutterings of a nest going off to sleep. All this shed over the
artistic interior a vague perfume of family happiness which the poet
breathed in with delight:_
"_Decidedly, my dear fellow?" he said to his friend, "you were in the
right. There are no two ways of being happy. Happiness lies in this and
in nothing else. You must find me a wife!_"