The following day I was up at the crack of dawn. I had just got dressed and was preparing myself to take up where I had left off when two short knocks resounded at the door:
"Come in!"
The door opened. A man already in the twilight of his life, tall, thin, dressed in black, appeared on the threshold. The face of this man, his eyes set close together, his great hook nose over which loomed a broad, bony brow had something stern about it. He greeted me solemnly.
"Mr Christian Venius, the painter?" he said.
"I am he, sir."
He bowed once more, giving his own name:
"Baron Frederick Van Spreckdal."
The appearance in my poor hovel of the rich art collector Van Spreckdal, a judge in the criminal court, made a strong impression on me. I could not stop myself from casting a surreptitious glance at my old worm-eaten furniture, my damp tapestries and my dusty floor. I felt humiliated by such a squalid state of affairs… But Van Spreckdal did not seem to pay any attention to these things and promptly sat down at my little table:
"Mister Venius," he went on, "I've come to…"
But, just then, his eyes came to rest on the incomplete sketch…. he failed to finish his sentence. I had seated myself on the edge of the truckle bed and the sudden attention given by this person to one of my works made my heart beat faster with a feeling of apprehension that was difficult to define.