Clerambault was flattered, thinking he had touched
the popular string. The brothers-in-law spent their evenings alone
together. Clerambault read, Camus drank in his verses; he knew them by
heart, and told everyone who would listen to him that Hugo had come
to life again, and that each of these poems was worth a victory. His
noisy admiration made it unnecessary for the other members of the
family to express their opinion. Under some excuse, Rosine regularly
made a practice of leaving the room when the reading was over.
Clerambault felt it, and would have liked to ask his daughter's
opinion, but found it more prudent not to put the question. He
preferred to persuade himself that Rosine's emotion and timidity put
her to flight. He was vexed all the same, but the approval of the
outside world healed this slight wound. His poems appeared in
the _bourgeois_ papers, and proved the most striking success of
Clerambault's career, for no other work of his had raised such
unanimous admiration. A poet is always pleased to have it said that
his last work is his best, all the more when he knows that it is
inferior to the others.
Clerambault knew it perfectly well, but he swallowed all the fawning
reviews of the press with infantile vanity. In the evening he made
Camus read them aloud in the family circle, beaming with joy as he
listened.
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