Imagine, therefore, how happy he was and how his heart was beating as he stood before that memorial chapel raised to a hero by the gratitude of a whole people. It seemed to him that William Tell in person, still dripping with the waters of the lake, his crossbow and his arrows in hand, was about to open the door to him.
“No entrance... I am at work... This is not the day...” cried a loud voice from within, made louder by the sonority of the vaulted roof.
“Monsieur Astier-Réhu, of the French Academy...”
“Herr Doctor Professor Schwanthaler...”
“Tartarin of Tarascon...”
In the arch above the portal, perched upon a scaffolding, appeared a half-length of the painter in working-blouse, palette in hand.
“My famulus will come down and open to you, messieurs,” he said with respectful intonations.
“I was sure of it, pardi!” thought Tartarin; “I had only to name myself.”
However, he had the good taste to stand aside modestly, and only entered after all the others.
The painter, superb fellow, with the gilded, ruddy head of an artist of the Renaissance, received his visitors on the wooden steps which led to the temporary staging put up for the purpose of painting the roof. The frescos, representing the principal episodes in the life of William Tell, were finished, all but one, namely: the scene of the apple in the market-place of Altorf. On this he was now at work, and his young famulus, as he called him, feet and legs bare under a toga of the middle ages, and his hair archangelically arranged, was posing as the son of William Tell.