Les femmes d'artistes

It was time for effusions, confidences. The lamp shone lightly under the lampshade, limiting its circle of flame to the intimacy of conversation, leaving barely distinct the capricious luxury of the vast walls cluttered with canvases, outfits, hangings, and finished at the top by a glazing where the dark blue of the sky penetrated freely. Alone, a portrait of a woman, leaning slightly forward as if to listen, emerged halfway through the shadows, young, with intelligent eyes, a grave and good mouth, with a spiritual smile which seemed to defend the husband's easel against fools and the discourteous.

A low chair separated from the fire, two little blue shoes dragging on the carpet also indicated the presence of a child in the house; and, indeed, from the next room, where the mother and the baby had just disappeared, came out in puffs of soft laughter, chirps, the pretty train of a nest that falls asleep. All this spread in this artistic interior a vague perfume of family happiness that the poet craved with delight: