His professional pride was touched, and he said this with somewhat less than his usual bonhomie—­almost with a shade of irritability.

“Come,” said I, smiling, “we will not discuss a topic which we can never see from the same point of view.  Doing art is better than talking art; and your business now is to find a fresh subject and prepare another canvas.  Meanwhile cheer up, and forget all about Louis XI. and the Hanging Committee.  What say you to dining with me at the Trois Freres?  It will do you good.”

“Good!” cried he, springing to his feet and shaking his fist at the picture.  “More good, by Jupiter, than all the paint and megilp that ever was wasted!  Not all the fine arts of Europe are worth a poulet a la Marengo and a bottle of old Romanee!”

So saying, he turned his picture to the wall, seized his cap, locked his door, scrawled outside with a piece of chalk,—­“Summoned to the Tuileries on state affairs,” and followed me, whistling, down the six flights of gloomy, ricketty, Quartier-Latin lodging-house stairs up which he lived and had his being.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XLVIII.

I MAKE MYSELF ACQUAINTED WITH THE IMPOLITE WORLD AND ITS PLACES OP UNFASHIONABLE RESORT.

Mueller and I dined merrily at the Cafe of the Trois Freres Provencaux, discussed our coffee and cigars outside the Rotonde in the Palais Royal, and then started off in search of adventures.  Striking up in a north-easterly direction through a labyrinth of narrow streets, we emerged at the Rue des Fontaines, just in front of that famous second-hand market yclept the Temple.  It was Saturday night, and the business of the place was at its height.  We went in, and turning aside from the broad thoroughfares which intersect the market at right angles, plunged at once into a net-work of crowded side-alleys, noisy and populous as a cluster of beehives.  Here were bargainings, hagglings, quarrellings, elbowings, slang, low wit, laughter, abuse, cheating, and chattering enough to turn the head of a neophyte like myself.  Mueller, however, was in his element.  He took me up one row and down another, pointed out all that was curious, had a nod for every grisette, and an answer for every touter, and enjoyed the Babel like one to the manner born.

“Buy, messieurs, buy!  What will you buy?” was the question that assailed us on both sides, wherever we went.

“What do you sell, mon ami ?” was Mueller’s invariable reply.

“What do you want, m’sieur?”

“Twenty thousand francs per annum, and the prettiest wife in Paris,” says my friend; a reply which is sure to evoke something spirituel, after the manner of the locality.