Maitland would not have pardoned himself a concession of art.

He considered rascals the painters who begged success by compromise in their style, and he thought it quite natural to take the money of Mademoiselle Chapron, whom he did not love, and for whom, now that he had grown to manhood and knew several of her compatriots, he likewise felt the prejudice of race.
"The glory of the colonel of the Empire and friendship for that good Florent," as he said, "covered all." Poor and good Florent! That marriage was to him the romance of his youth realized.

He had desired it since the first week that Maitland had given him the cordial handshake which had bound them.

To live in the shadow of his friend, become at once his brother-in-law and his ideal--he did not dream of any other solution of his own destiny.

The faults of Maitland, developed by age, fortune, and success--we recall the triumph of his 'Femme en violet et en jeune' in the Salon of 1884--found Florent as blind as at the epoch when they played cricket together in the fields at Beaumont.