“Oh, him!” replied Papa Musard, sinking back on his pillow.  “M’sieur Rufin, this is the last time I shall appeal to you.  Before long I shall again be in the presence of the great master, of Corot, of him who——­”

Rufin, it seemed, had lost all respect both for Corot and death.  He waved an imperious arm, over which his cloak flapped like a black wing.

“Who is the artist in the room below?” repeated Rufin urgently.  “Do you know him?”

“No,” replied Papa Musard, with emphasis.  “Know him—­an Italian, a ruffian, an apache, a man with hair on his arms like a baboon!  I do not know him.  There!”

He was offended; a dying man has his privileges, at least.  The face, gnarled and tempestuously bearded, which had been perpetuated by a hundred laborious painters, glared from the pillow at Rufin with indignation and protest.

Rufin suppressed an impulse to speak forcibly, for one has no more right to strip a man of his pose than of his shirt.  He smiled at the angry invalid conciliatingly.

“See how I forget myself!” he said apologetically.  “We artists are all alike.  Show us a picture and our manners go by the board.  With you, Musard, need I say more?”

“You have said a lot,” grumbled the ancient of days.  “Coming in roaring like a bull!  What picture has upset you?”

“A picture you have not seen,” said Rufin, “or you would be grasping my hand and weeping for joy—­you who know pictures better than us all!” He surveyed the invalid, who was softening.  Musard knew no more of pictures than a frame-maker; but that was a fact one did not mention in his presence.

“Since Corot,” sighed Musard, “I have seen few pictures which were—­ en effet—­pictures.”

“You have great memories,” agreed Rufin hastily.  “But I have just seen a picture—­ah, but a picture, my friend!”

The old cunning face on the pillow resisted the charm of his manner, the gentleness of his appeal.

“Not his?” demanded Papa Musard.  “Not in the room underneath?  Not one of the daubs of that assassin, that cut-throat, that Italian?”

Rufin nodded, as though confirming a pleasant surprise.  “Is it not strange,” he said, “how genius will roost on any perch?  It is true, then, that he is a person who offends your taste?  That is bad.  Tell me about him, Musard.”

He reached himself a chair and sat down near the foot of the bed.

“You are always making a fuss of some worthless creature,” grumbled Musard.  “I do not even know the man’s name.  They speak of him as Peter the Lucky—­it is a nickname he has on the streets, an apache name.  He has been in prison, too, and he bellows insults at his elders and betters when they pass him on the stairs.  He is a man of no soul!”

“Yes,” said Rufin.  “But did you say he had been in prison?”

“I did,” affirmed Musard.  “Ask anyone.  It is not that I abuse him; he is, in fact, a criminal.  Once he threw an egg at a gendarme.  And yet you come to me—­a dying man—­and declare that such a creature can paint!  Bah!”