Julio soon discovered in him an admirable reflex of his own personality.  He knew that Argensola had come third-class from Madrid with twenty francs in his pocket, in order to “capture glory,” to use his own words.  Upon observing that the Spaniard was painting with as much difficulty as himself, with the same wooden and childish strokes, which are so characteristic of the make-believe artists and pot-boilers, the routine workers concerned themselves with color and other rank fads.  Argensola was a psychological artist, a painter of souls.  And his disciple, felt astonished and almost displeased on learning what a comparatively simple thing it was to paint a soul.  Upon a bloodless countenance, with a chin as sharp as a dagger, the gifted Spaniard would trace a pair of nearly round eyes, and at the centre of each pupil he would aim a white brush stroke, a point of light . . . the soul.  Then, planting himself before the canvas, he would proceed to classify this soul with his inexhaustible imagination, attributing to it almost every kind of stress and extremity.  So great was the sway of his rapture that Julio, too, was able to see all that the artist flattered himself into believing that he had put into the owlish eyes.  He, also, would paint souls . . . souls of women.

In spite of the ease with which he developed his psychological creations, Argensola preferred to talk, stretched on a divan, or to read, hugging the fire while his friend and protector was outside.  Another advantage this fondness for reading gave young Desnoyers was that he was no longer obliged to open a volume, scanning the index and last pages “just to get the idea.”  Formerly when frequenting society functions, he had been guilty of coolly asking an author which was his best book—­his smile of a clever man—­giving the writer to understand that he merely enquired so as not to waste time on the other volumes.  Now it was no longer necessary to do this; Argensola would read for him.  As soon as Julio would see him absorbed in a book, he would demand an immediate share:  “Tell me the story.”  So the “secretary,” not only gave him the plots of comedies and novels, but also detailed the argument of Schopenhauer or of Nietzsche . . .  Dona Luisa almost wept on hearing her visitors—­with that benevolence which wealth always inspires—­speak of her son as “a rather gay young man, but wonderfully well read!”

In exchange for his lessons, Argensola received, much the same treatment as did the Greek slaves who taught rhetoric to the young patricians of decadent Rome.  In the midst of a dissertation, his lord and friend would interrupt him with—­“Get my dress suit ready.  I am invited out this evening.”

At other times, when the instructor was luxuriating in bodily comfort, with a book in one hand near the roaring stove, seeing through the windows the gray and rainy afternoon, his disciple would suddenly appear saying, “Quick, get out! . . .  There’s a woman coming!”