d a sketch to the mother.

"What! for nothing?" they said.

Pierre Grassou could not help smiling.

"You shouldn't give away your pictures in that way; they are money,"
said old Vervelle.

At the third sitting pere Vervelle mentioned a fine gallery of pictures
which he had in his country-house at Ville d'Avray--Rubens, Gerard Douw,
Mieris, Terburg, Rembrandt, Titian, Paul Potter, etc.

"Monsieur Vervelle has been very extravagant," said Madame Vervelle,
ostentatiously. "He has over one hundred thousand francs' worth of
pictures."

"I love Art," said the former bottle-dealer.

When Madame Vervelle's portrait was begun that of her husband was nearly
finished, and the enthusiasm of the family knew no bounds. The notary
had spoken in the highest praise of the painter. Pierre Grassou was, he
said, one of the most honest fellows on earth; he had laid by thirty-six
thousand francs; his days of poverty were over; he now saved about ten
thousand francs a year and capitalized the interest; in short, he was
incapable of making a woman unhappy. This last remark had enormous
weight in the scales. Vervelle's friends now heard of nothing but the
celebrated painter Fougeres.

The day on which Fougeres began the portrait of Mademoiselle Virginie,
he was virtually son-in-law to the Vervelle family. The three Vervelles
bloomed out in this studio, which they were now accustomed to consider
as one of their residences; there was to them an inexplicable attraction
in this clean, neat, pretty, and artistic abode. Abyssus abyssum, the
commonplace attracts the commonplace. Toward the end of the sitting the
stairway shook, the door was violently thrust open by Joseph Bridau; he
came like a whirlwind, his hair flying. He showed his grand haggard face
as he looked about him, casting everywhere the lightning of his glance;
then he walked round the whole studio, and returned abruptly to Grassou,
pulling his coat together over the gastric region, and endeavouring, but
in vain, to button it, the button mould having escaped from its capsule
of cloth.

"Wood is dear," he said to Grassou.

"Ah!"

"The British are after me" (slang term for creditors) "Gracious! do you
paint such things as that?"

"Hold your tongue!"

"Ah! to be sure, yes."

The Vervelle family, extremely shocked by this extraordinary apparition,
passed from its ordinary red to a cherry-red, two shades deeper.

"Brings in, hey?" continued Joseph. "Any shot in your locker