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.

"Who are his friends?" he inquired.

But the concierge could tell him nothing useful.

"He had no friends in the house," she said. "Our poor honest people--
he treated them with contumely. I do not know his friends, M'sieur."

"Ah, well," said Rufin, "I shall come across him somehow."

He saluted her perfunctorily and was about to turn away, but the
avidity of her face reminded him that he had a standard to live up
to. He produced another five-franc piece and was pursued to the gate
by the stridency of her gratitude.

A man--even a man of notable attributes and shocking manners--is as
easily lost in Paris as anywhere; it is a city of many shadows. At
the end of some weeks, during which his work had suffered from his
new preoccupation, Rufin saw himself baffled. His man had vanished
effectually, carrying with him to his obscurity the great picture. It
was the memory of that consummate thing that held Rufin to his task
of finding the author; he pictured it to himself, housed in some
garret, making the mean place wonderful. He obtained the unofficial
aid of the police and of many other people whose busi