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Lampron's mother interrupted him afresh, reproachfully
"He came to wish you a happy birthday, ood as another to listen to good advice Besides, I a of one of my friends 'Tis but a short story, Fabien, and instructive I will give it you in very feords My friend was very young and enthusiastic He was on his way through the galleries of Italy, brush in hand, his heart full of the ceaseless song of youth in holiday The world never had played him false, nor balked him He made the future bend to the fancy of his drea common men from those loftier realms where the contes He ad beauty of Italian landscape and Italian art But one day, without reflection, without knowledge, without foresight, he was rash enough to fall in love with a girl of noble birth whose portrait he was painting; to speak to her and to win her love He thought then, in the silly innocence of his youth, that art abridges all distance and that love effaces it Crueller nonsense never was uttered, ainst the parent's denial, against hiainst her, powerless in all alike, beaten at every point The end was--Do you care to learn the end? The girl was carried off, struck down by a brief illness, soon dead; the itive also, is still so weak in presence of his sorrow that even after these long years he can not think of it without weeping"
La, he as so seldoray, a tear was trickling I noticed that Mada lower and lower over her needles He went on: "I have kept the portrait, the one you saw, Fabien They would like to have it over yonder They are old folk by now Every year they ask me for this relic of our common sorrow; every year they send me, about this tiirl's flower, and theiris, 'Give up to us what is left of her, the masterpiece built up of your youth and hers' But I am selfish, Fabien I, like them, am jealous of all the sorrows this portrait recalls to me, and I deny them Come, mother, where are the flowers? I have promised Fabien to show them to him"