"True--and when you remember that he never washes--!"
"Ah, sacredie! yes--there is the marvel!"
And Monsieur Eugène Droz held up his hands and eyes with all the reverent admiration of a true believer for a particularly dirty dervish.
"Who, in Heaven's name, is this unclean individual who used to like his vegetables underdone, and never washes?" whispered I in Müller's ear.
"What--Lemonnier! You don't mean to say you never heard of Lemonnier?"
"Never, till now. Is he a cook?"
Müller gave me a dig in the ribs that took my breath away.
"Goguenard!" said he. "Lemonnier's an artist--the foremost man of the water-color school. But I wouldn't be too funny if I were you. Suppose you were to burst your jocular vein--there'd be a catastrophe!"
Meanwhile the conversation of Messieurs Droz and Lepany had taken a fresh turn, and attracted a little circle of listeners, among whom I observed an eccentric-looking young man with a club-foot, an enormously long neck, and a head of short, stiff, dusty hair, like the bristles of a blacking-brush.
"Queroulet!" said Lepany, with a contemptuous flourish of his pipe. "Who spoke of Queroulet? Bah!--a miserable plodder, destitute of ideality--a fellow who paints only what he sees, and sees only what is commonplace--a dull, narrow-souled, unimaginative handicraftsman, to whom a tree is just a tree; and a man, a man; and a straw, a straw, and nothing more!"