Well, men of real mind are laughing to themselves about it, that's all.

You are the mind and the beauty of this little circle of the petty bourgeoisie; it is this superiority which led me in the first instance to worship you.

I have since longed to drag you out of it; for I love you sincerely--more in friendship than in love; though a great deal of love is gliding into it," he added, pressing her to his heart under cover of the recess of a window to which he had taken her.
"Madame Phellion will play the piano," cried Colleville.

"We must all dance to-night--bottles and Brigitte's francs and all the little girls! I'll go and fetch my clarionet." He gave his empty coffee-cup to his wife, smiling to see her so friendly with la Peyrade.
"What have you said and done to my husband ?" asked Flavie, when Colleville had left them.
"Must I tell you all our secrets ?" "Ah! you don't love me," she replied, looking at him with the coquettish slyness of a woman who is not quite decided in her mind.
"Well, since you tell me yours," he said, letting himself go to the lively impulse of Provencal gaiety, always so charming and apparently so natural, "I will not conceal from you an anxiety in my heart." He took her back to the same window and said, smiling:-- "Colleville, poor man, has seen in me the artist repressed by all these bourgeois; silent before them because I feel misjudged, misunderstood, and repelled by them.

He has felt the heat of the sacred fire that consumes me.