“Tiens! the moral, is—­keep our fair friend in her place.  Remember that a dinner at thirty sous in the Palais Royal, or a fete with fireworks at Mabille, will give her ten times more pleasure than the daintiest repast you could order at the Maison Doree, or the choicest night of the season at either opera house.  And how should it be otherwise?  One must understand a thing to be able to enjoy it; and I’ll be sworn Mam’selle Josephine was infinitely more bored last night than yourself.”

Our conversation, or rather his monologue, was here interrupted by the ringing of the outer bell.

The artist sat up, took his pipe from his lips, and looked considerably disturbed.

“Mille tonnerres!” said he in a low tone.  “Who can it be?... so early in the day ... not yet ten o’clock ... it is very mysterious.”

“It is only mysterious,” said I, “as long as you don’t open the door.  Shall I answer the bell?”

“No—­yes—­wait a moment ... suppose it is that demon, my landlord, or that archfiend, my tailor—­then you must say ... holy St. Nicholas! you must say I am in bed with small-pox, or that I’ve broken out suddenly into homicidal delirium, and you’re my keeper.”

“Unfortunately I should not know either of your princes of darkness at first sight.”

“True—­and it might be Dupont, who owes me thirty francs, and swore by the bones of his aunt (an excellent person, who keeps an estaminet in the Place St. Sulpice) that he would pay me this week. Diable! there goes the bell again.”

“It would perhaps be safest,” I suggested, “to let M. or N. ring on till he is tired of the exercise.”

“But conceive the horrid possibility of letting thirty francs ring themselves out of patience!  No, mon ami—­I will dare the worst that may happen.  Wait here for me—­I will answer the door myself,”

Now it should be explained that Mueller’s apartments consisted of three rooms.  First, a small outer chamber which he dignified with the title of Salle d’Attente, but which, as it was mainly furnished with old boots, umbrellas and walking-sticks, and contained, by way of accommodation for visitors only a three-legged stool and a door-mat, would have been more fitly designated as the hall.  Between this Salle d’Attente and the den in which he slept, ate, smoked, and received his friends, lay the studio—­once a stately salon, now a wilderness of litter and dilapidation.  On one side you beheld three windows closely boarded up, with strips of newspaper pasted over the cracks to exclude every gleam of day.  Overhead yawned a huge, dusty skylight, to make way for which a fine old painted ceiling had been ruthlessly knocked away.  On the walls were pinned and pasted all sorts of rough sketches and studies in color and crayon.  In one corner lolled a despondent-looking lay-figure in a moth-eaten Spanish cloak; in another lay a heap of plaster-casts, gigantic hands and feet, broken-nosed