His cold-bloodedness touched at certain points on rectitude and loyalty; his ostentation had a lining of generosity.
Results, we must remember, are to the profit of society; motives concern God.
But after the arrival of Modeste's letter Ernest deceived himself no longer as to Canalis.

The pair had just finished breakfast and were talking together in the poet's study, which was on the ground-floor of a house standing back in a court-yard, and looked into a garden.
"There!" exclaimed Canalis, "I was telling Madame de Chaulieu the other day that I ought to bring out another poem; I knew admiration was running short, for I have had no anonymous letters for a long time." "Is it from an unknown woman ?" "Unknown?
yes!--a D'Este, in Havre; evidently a feigned name." Canalis passed the letter to La Briere.

The little poem, with all its hidden enthusiasms, in short, poor Modeste's heart, was disdainfully handed over, with the gesture of a spoiled dandy.
"It is a fine thing," said the lawyer, "to have the power to attract such feelings; to force a poor woman to step out of the habits which nature, education, and the world dictate to her, to break through conventions.

What privileges genius wins! A letter such as this, written by a young girl--a genuine young girl--without hidden meanings, with real enthusiasm--" "Well, what ?" said Canalis.
"Why, a man might suffer as much as Tasso and yet feel recompensed," cried La Briere.
"So he might, my dear fellow, by a first letter of that kind, and even a second; but how about the thirtieth?
And suppose you find out that these young enthusiasts are little jades?
Or imagine a poet rushing along the brilliant path in search of her, and finding at the end of it an old Englishwoman sitting on a mile-stone and offering you her hand! Or suppose this post-office angel should really be a rather ugly girl in quest of a husband?
Ah, my boy! the effervescence then goes down." "I begin to perceive," said La Briere, smiling, "that there is something poisonous in glory, as there is in certain dazzling flowers." "And then," resumed Canalis, "all these women, even when they are simple-minded, have ideals, and you can't satisfy them.

They never say to themselves that a poet is a vain man, as I am accused of being; they can't conceive what it is for an author to be at the mercy of a feverish excitement, which makes him disagreeable and capricious; they want him always grand, noble; it never occurs to them that genius is a disease, or that Nathan lives with Florine; that D'Arthez is too fat, and Joseph Bridau is too thin; that Beranger limps, and that their own particular deity may have the snuffles! A Lucien de Rubempre, poet and cupid, is a phoenix.