It isn't on account of fashion; but I don't want to be recognized.

Have the goodness not to betray me, monsieur; I am supposed to be a little painter of no consequence,--a mere decorator.

I'm on may way to a chateau where I mustn't rouse the slightest suspicion." "Ah! I see," said the count, "some intrigue,--a love affair! Youth is happy!" Oscar, who was writhing in his skin at being a nobody and having nothing to say, gazed at Colonel Czerni-Georges and at the famous painter Schinner, and wondered how he could transform himself into somebody.

But a youth of nineteen, kept at home all his life, and going for two weeks only into the country, what could he be, or do, or say?
However, the Alicante had got into his head, and his vanity was boiling in his veins; so when the famous Schinner allowed a romantic adventure to be guessed at in which the danger seemed as great as the pleasure, he fastened his eyes, sparkling with wrath and envy, upon that hero.
"Yes," said the count, with a credulous air, "a man must love a woman well to make such sacrifices." "What sacrifices ?" demanded Mistigris.
"Don't you know, my little friend, that a ceiling painted by so great a master as yours is worth its weight in gold ?" replied the count.

"If the civil list paid you, as it did, thirty thousand francs for each of those rooms in the Louvre," he continued, addressing Schinner, "a bourgeois,--as you call us in the studios--ought certainly to pay you twenty thousand.