You take the anxiety of this alternative for remorse." "You have no comprehension of feelings," said the poet, irritably, like a man who hears truth when he expects a compliment.
"That is what a bigamist should tell the jury," retorted La Briere, laughing.
This epigram made another disagreeable impression on Canalis.

He began to think La Briere too witty and too free for a secretary.
The arrival of an elegant caleche, driven by a coachman in the Canalis livery, made the more excitement at the Chalet because the two suitors were expected, and all the personages of this history were assembled to receive them, except the duke and Butscha.
"Which is the poet ?" asked Madame Latournelle of Dumay in the embrasure of a window, where she stationed herself as soon as she heard the wheels.
"The one who walks like a drum-major," answered the lieutenant.
"Ah!" said the notary's wife, examining Canalis, who was swinging his body like a man who knows he is being looked at.

The fault lay with the great lady who flattered him incessantly and spoiled him,--as all women older than their adorers invariably spoil and flatter them; Canalis in his moral being was a sort of Narcissus.

When a woman of a certain age wishes to attach a man forever, she begins by deifying his defects, so as to cut off all possibility of rivalry; for a rival is never, at the first approach, aware of the super-fine flattery to which the man is accustomed.

Coxcombs are the product of this feminine manoeuvre, when they are not fops by nature.