ly gray whiskers of the famous
master.

He, with his keen sensitiveness to praise, was not long in observing the
atmosphere of curiosity that surrounded him. The young copyists seemed
to stick closer to their easels, knitted their brows, dilated their
nostrils, and moved their brushes slowly, with hesitation, knowing that
he was behind them, trembling at every step that sounded on the inlaid
floor, full of fear and desire that he might deign to cast a glance over
their shoulders. He divined with a sort of pride what all the mouths
were whispering, what all the eyes were saying, fixed absent-mindedly on
the canvases only to turn toward him.

"It's Renovales--the painter Renovales."

The master looked for a long while at one of the copyists--an old man,
decrepit and almost blind, with heavy convex spectacles that gave him
the appearance of a sea-monster, whose hands trembled with senile
unsteadiness. Renovales recognized him. Twenty years before, when he
used to study in the Museo, he had seen him in the same spot, always
copying _Los Borrachos_. Even if he should become completely blind, if
the picture should be lost, he could reproduce it by feeling. In those
days they had often talked together, but the poor man could not have the
remotest suspicion that the Renovales whom people talked so much about
was the same lad who on more than one occasion had borrowed a brush from
him, but whose memory was scarcely preserved in his mind, mummified by
eternal imitation.

Renovales thought of the kindness of the chummy Bacchus and the gang of
ruffians of his court, who for half a century had been supporting the
household of the copyist, and he fancied he could see the old wife, the
married children, the grandchildren--a whole family supported by the old
man's trembling hand.

Some one whispered to him the news that was filling the Museo with
excitement and the copyist, shrugging his shoulders disdainfully, raised
his moribund glance from his work.

And so Renovales was there, the famous Renovales! At last he was going
to see the prodigy!

The master saw those grotesque eyes like those of a sea-monster, fixed
on him, with an ironical gleam behind the heavy lenses. The grafter! He
had already heard of that studio, as splendid as a palace, behind the
Retire What Renovales had in such plenty had been taken from men like
him who, for want of influence, had been left behind. He charged
thousands of dollars for a canvas, when Ve