After that, his visits to the studio were very frequent.  The artist was obliged to recommend his friends to take a good long walk after lunch, abstaining from reappearing in the rue de la Pompe until nightfall.  Sometimes, however, Don Marcelo would unexpectedly present himself in the morning, and then the soulful impressionist would have to scurry from place to place, hiding here, concealing there, in order that his workroom should preserve its appearance of virtuous labor.

“Youth . . . youth!” the visitor would murmur with a smile of tolerance.

And he actually had to make an effort to recall the dignity of his years, in order not to ask Argensola to present him to the fair fugitives whose presence he suspected in the interior rooms.  Perhaps they had been his boy’s friends, too.  They represented a part of his past, anyway, and that was enough to make him presume that they had great charms which made them interesting.

These surprises, with their upsetting consequences, finally made the painter rather regret this new friendship; and the invitations to dinner which he was constantly receiving bored him, too.  He found the Desnoyers table most excellent, but too tedious—­for the father and mother could talk of nothing but their absent son.  Chichi scarcely looked at her brother’s friend.  Her attention was entirely concentrated on the war.  The irregularity in the mails was exasperating her so that she began composing protests to the government whenever a few days passed by without bringing any letter from sub-Lieutenant Lacour.

Argensola excused himself on various pretexts from continuing to dine in the avenue Victor Hugo.  It pleased him far more to haunt the cheap restaurants with his female flock.  His host accepted his negatives with good-natured resignation.

“Not to-day, either?”

And in order to compensate for his guest’s non-appearance, he would present himself at the studio earlier than ever on the day following.

It was an exquisite pleasure for the doting father to let the time slip by seated on the divan which still seemed to guard the very hollow made by Julio’s body, gazing at the canvases covered with color by his brush, toasting his toes by the beat of a stove which roared so cosily in the profound, conventual silence.  It certainly was an agreeable refuge, full of memories in the midst of monotonous Paris so saddened by the war that he could not meet a friend who was not preoccupied with his own troubles.

His former purchasing dissipations had now lost all charm for him.  The Hotel Drouot no longer tempted him.  At that time, the goods of German residents, seized by the government, were being auctioned off;—­a felicitous retaliation for the enforced journey which the fittings of the castle of Villeblanche had taken on the road to Berlin; but the agents told him in vain of the few competitors which he would now meet.  He no longer felt attracted by these extraordinary