“A quarter of an hour.”

“What brought you here?”

“I want to be an artist.”

“Where do you belong? where do you come from?”

“From mamma’s house.”

“Oh! mamma!” cried the pupils.

“Silence at the easels!” cried Chaudet.  “Who is your mamma?”

“She is Madame Bridau.  My papa, who is dead, was a friend of the Emperor; and if you will teach me to draw, the Emperor will pay all you ask for it.”

“His father was head of a department at the ministry of the Interior,” exclaimed Chaudet, struck by a recollection.  “So you want to be an artist, at your age?”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Well, come here just as much as you like; we’ll amuse you.  Give him a board, and paper, and chalks, and let him alone.  You are to know, you young scamps, that his father did me a service.  Here, Corde-a-puits, go and get some cakes and sugar-plums,” he said to the pupil who had tortured Joseph, giving him some small change.  “We’ll see if you are to be artist by the way you gobble up the dainties,” added the sculptor, chucking Joseph under the chin.

Then he went round examining the pupils’ works, followed by the child, who looked and listened, and tried to understand him.  The sweets were brought, Chaudet, himself, the child, and the whole studio all had their teeth in them; and Joseph was petted quite as much as he had been teased.  The whole scene, in which the rough play and real heart of artists were revealed, and which the boy instinctively understood, made a great impression on his mind.  The apparition of the sculptor, —­for whom the Emperor’s protection opened a way to future glory, closed soon after by his premature death,—­was like a vision to little Joseph.  The child said nothing to his mother about this adventure, but he spent two hours every Sunday and every Thursday in Chaudet’s atelier.  From that time forth, Madame Descoings, who humored the fancies of the two cherubim, kept Joseph supplied with pencils and red chalks, prints and drawing-paper.  At school, the future colorist sketched his masters, drew his comrades, charcoaled the dormitories, and showed surprising assiduity in the drawing-class.  Lemire, the drawing-master, struck not only with the lad’s inclination but also with his actual progress, came to tell Madame Bridau of her son’s faculty.  Agathe, like a true provincial, who knows as little of art as she knows much of housekeeping, was terrified.  When Lemire left her, she burst into tears.

“Ah!” she cried, when Madame Descoings went to ask what was the matter.  “What is to become of me!  Joseph, whom I meant to make a government clerk, whose career was all marked out for him at the ministry of the interior, where, protected by his father’s memory, he might have risen to be chief of a division before he was twenty-five, he, my boy, he wants to be a painter,—­a vagabond!  I always knew that child would give me nothing but trouble.”