The big coin seemed to work on the concierge like a powerful drug.  She choked noisily and was for the while almost enthusiastic.

“He shall have the card,” she promised.  “I swear it!  After all, artists must have their experiences.  Doubtless the monsieur who resides above is a great painter?”

“A very great painter,” replied Rufin.

His work, during the next three weeks, exiled him to a green solitude of flat land whose horizons were ridged by poplars growing beside roads laid down as though with a ruler, so straight they were as they sliced across the rich levels.  It was there he effected the vital work on his great picture, “Promesse,” a revelation of earth gravid with life, of the opulent promise and purpose of spring.  It is the greater for what lodged in his mind of the picture he had seen in the Montmartre tenement.  It was constant in his thought, the while he noted on his canvas the very texture of the year’s early light; it aided his brush.  In honesty and humbleness of heart, as he worked, he acknowledged a debt to the unknown Italian who stole the key of the room to sell, and called his concierge a she-camel.

It was a debt he knew he could pay.  He, Rufin, whose work was in the Luxembourg, in galleries in America, in Russia, in the palaces of kings, could assure the painter of Montmartre of fame.  He went to seek him on the evening of his return to the city.

The fat concierge preserved still her burst and overripe appearance, and at the sight of him she was so moved that she rose from her chair and stood upright to voice her lamentations.

“Monsieur, what can I say?  He is gone!  It was a nightmare.  It is true that he omitted to pay his rent—­a defect of his temperament, without doubt.  But the proprietor does not make these distinctions.  After three weeks he would expel Michelangelo himself.  The monsieur who was driven out—­he resisted.  He employed blasphemies, maledictions; he smote my poor husband on the nose and in the stomach—­all to no purpose, for he is gone.  I was overcome with grief, but what could I do?”

“At least you know whither he went?” suggested Rufin.

“But, M’sieur, how should I know?  His furniture—­it was not much—­was impounded for the rent, else one might have followed it.  He took away with him only one picture, and that by force of threats and assaults.”

“Oh yes, of course he would take that,” agreed the artist.

“He retired down the street with it, walking backward in the middle of the road and not ceasing to make outcries at us,” said the concierge.  “He uttered menaces; he was dangerous.  Could I leave my poor husband to imperil myself by following such a one?  I ask M’sieur could I?”

“I suppose not,” said Rufin, staring at her absently.  He was thinking, by an odd momentary turn of fancy, how well he could have spared this gruesome woman for another look at the picture.