“Talk about my mighty impersonality before the nude?” he cried.  “Impersonality!  Bah!  Mine?  Let me tell you that for your boy the nude in the human form doesn’t exist any more than a nude snake, fish, dog, cat, or canary exists for you or me.  He’s the most natural, practical, educated human being I ever came across, and there are several thousand mothers in France that would do well to send their jeunes filles to the school that turned him out.  In other words, my friend, your boy is so fresh that I have no mind to be the one to watch him wither or wake up or do any of the things that Paris leads to.  I wired for you to take him away.”

“We’ll have to find him first,” said Leighton.  “Let’s look in his room.”

Together they walked down the hall.  Leighton opened the door without knocking.  He stood transfixed.  Le Brux stared over his shoulder.  Lewis, with his back to them, was working feverishly at the wet clay piled on a board laid across the backs of two chairs.  On Lewis’s little bed lay Cellette, front down, her chin in her hand, and reading a book.

“Holy name of ten thousand pigs!” murmured Le Brux.

Lewis turned.

“Why, Dad!” he cried, “I am glad to see you!”

Leighton’s heart was in the grip he gave the boy’s hand so frankly held out.

“Maitre,” remarked Cellette from the bed, “believe me if you can:  he is still a babe.”

“A babe!” cried Le Brux, catching Lewis with finger and thumb and lifting him away from the board.  “I should say he is.  Here!” He caught up chunks of wet clay and hurled them at Lewis’s dainty model of Cellette.  He started molding with sweeps of his thumb.  A gigantic, but graceful, leg began to take form.  He turned and caught Lewis again and shook him till his head rolled.  “Big!” he roared, thumping his chest.  “Make it big—­like me!”

Leighton returned to London alone.

CHAPTER XXII

Lewis’s life in Paris fell into unusual, but not unhappy, lines.  It was true that when others were around, Le Brux treated him as though he were a scullion or at least a poor relative living on his bounty, for the great sculptor was in dread lest it be noised about that he had at last taken a pupil.  But when they were alone, he made up for all his brutality by a certain tenderness which he was at great pains to dissemble.  He had but one phrase of commendation, and it harped back and reminded them both of Leighton.  When Le Brux was well pleased with Lewis, he would say, “My son, I shall yet create thee.”

It could not be said that master and pupil lived together.  Lewis had a room down the hall and the freedom of the great atelier, but he never ate with Le Brux and never accompanied him on his rare outings.  From the very first day he had learned that he must fend for himself.