In the Days of My Youth: A Novel

by Amelia B. Edwards

"Unfortunately I should not know either of your princes of darkness at first sight."

"True--and it might be Dupont, who owes me thirty francs, and swore by the bones of his aunt (an excellent person, who keeps an estaminet in the Place St. Sulpice) that he would pay me this week. Diable! there goes the bell again."

"It would perhaps be safest," I suggested, "to let M. or N. ring on till he is tired of the exercise."

"But conceive the horrid possibility of letting thirty francs ring themselves out of patience! No, mon ami--I will dare the worst that may happen. Wait here for me--I will answer the door myself,"

Now it should be explained that Müller's apartments consisted of three rooms. First, a small outer chamber which he dignified with the title of Salle d'Attente, but which, as it was mainly furnished with old boots, umbrellas and walking-sticks, and contained, by way of accommodation for visitors only a three-legged stool and a door-mat, would have been more fitly designated as the hall. Between this Salle d'Attente and the den in which he slept, ate, smoked, and received his friends, lay the studio--once a stately salon, now a wilderness of litter and dilapidation. On one side you beheld three windows closely boarded up, with strips of newspaper pasted over the cracks to exclude every gleam of day. Overhead yawned a huge, dusty skylight, to make way for which a fine old painted ceiling had been ruthlessly knocked away. On the walls were pinned and pasted all sorts of rough sketches and studies in color and crayon. In one corner lolled a despondent-looking lay-figure in a moth-eaten Spanish cloak; in another lay a heap of plaster-casts, gigantic hands and feet, broken-nosed masks of the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Hercules Farnese, and other foreigners of distinction. Upon the chimney-piece were displayed a pair of foils, a lute, a skull, an antique German drinking-mug, and several very modern empty bottles. In the middle of the room stood two large easels, a divan, a round table, and three or four chairs; while the floor was thickly strewn with empty color-tubes, bits of painting-rag, corks, cigar-ends, and all kinds of miscellaneous litter.

All these things I had observed as I passed in; for this, be it remembered, was my first visit to Müller in his own territory.

I heard him go through the studio and close the door behind him, and then I heard him open the door upon the public staircase. Presently he came back, shutting the door behind him as before.

"My dear fellow," he exclaimed, breathlessly, "you have brought luck with you! What do you think? A sitter--positively, a sitter! Wants to be sketched in at once--Vive la France!"

"Man or woman? Young or old? Plain or pretty?"

"Elderly half-length, feminine gender--Madame Tapotte. They are both there, Monsieur and Madame Excellent couple--redolent of the country--husband bucolic, adipose, auriferous--wife arrayed in all her glory, like the Queen of Sheba. I left them in the Salle d'Attente--told them I had a sitter--time immensely occupied--half-lengths furiously in demand ... Will you oblige me by performing the part for a few minutes, just to carry out the idea?"