So he began his work by coloring a canvas entitled, “The Dance of the Hours,” a mere pretext for copying pretty girls and selecting buxom models.  These he would sketch at a mad speed, filling in the outlines with blobs of multi-colored paint, and up to this point all went well.  Then he would begin to vacillate, remaining idle before the picture only to put it in the corner in hope of later inspiration.  It was the same way with his various studies of feminine heads.  Finding that he was never able to finish anything, he soon became resigned, like one who pants with fatigue before an obstacle waiting for a providential interposition to save him.  The important thing was to be a painter . . . even though he might not paint anything.  This afforded him the opportunity, on the plea of lofty aestheticism, of sending out cards of invitation and asking light women to his studio.  He lived during the night.  Don Marcelo, upon investigating the artist’s work, could not contain his indignation.  Every morning the two Desnoyers were accustomed to greet the first hours of dawn—­the father leaping from his bed, the son, on his way home to his studio to throw himself upon his couch not to wake till midday.

The credulous Dona Luisa would invent the most absurd explanations to defend her son.  Who could tell?  Perhaps he had the habit of painting during the night, utilizing it for original work.  Men resort to so many devilish things! . . .

Desnoyers knew very well what these nocturnal gusts of genius were amounting to—­scandals in the restaurants of Montmartre, and scrimmages, many scrimmages.  He and his gang, who believed that at seven a full dress or Tuxedo was indispensable, were like a band of Indians, bringing to Paris the wild customs of the plains.  Champagne always made them quarrelsome.  So they broke and paid, but their generosities were almost invariably followed by a scuffle.  No one could surpass Julio in the quick slap and the ready card.  His father heard with a heavy heart the news brought him by some friends thinking to flatter his vanity—­his son was always victorious in these gentlemanly encounters; he it was who always scratched the enemy’s skin.  The painter knew more about fencing than art.  He was a champion with various weapons; he could box, and was even skilled in the favorite blows of the prize fighters of the slums.  “Useless as a drone, and as dangerous, too,” fretted his father.  And yet in the back of his troubled mind fluttered an irresistible satisfaction—­an animal pride in the thought that this hare-brained terror was his own.