'Well, well,' Seguin answered with a polite expansion of his two hands, 'give yourself the trouble to come here to-morrow morning and prepare to copy a head of mine for the Salon of last year. You have seen it?—no? then this way, Messieurs, 'I will show it to you!''
The tone of exalted condescension in which he uttered those four words, 'Je vous la montrerai,' was as though he meant to afford them a glorious treat which would render them for ever after perfectly happy.
Hiram and Audouin followed the weazened-up little man into another room, where on an easel in the light stood his great Salon painting of Sardanapalus and the Egyptian Princess. As in everything that Seguin has painted, there was undoubtedly a certain meretricious beauty and force about it. The technique, indeed, was in its way absolutely perfect. The flesh tones had a satiny transparency; the draperies were arranged with exquisite skill and supreme knowledge; the touch was everywhere firm and solid: the art displayed was throughout consummate. Even the figures themselves, viewed as representing their historical namesakes, were not lacking in a certain theatrical grace and dignity.
Hiram felt instinctively that Sardanapalus was the masterpiece of a great artist, who had a marvellous hand and a profound knowledge of painting, but no soul in him; and even Audouin recognised at once that though the workmanship was as nearly perfect as the deepest study and the finest eye could possibly make it, yet there was a something still more profoundly artistic that was evidently wanting to the first conception of Seguin's masterpiece.
M. Seguin himself stood still for a minute or two with his hand on his hip, lips half parted and eye entranced, as though absorbed in contemplation of his own great work of art, and then glanced round sideways quite accidentally to see how its beauty affected the minds of the two strangers. Having furtively satisfied himself that Hiram was just then really appreciative of the clever light that fell obliquely upon Sardanapalus's dusky shoulder, and that Audouin was duly admiring the exquisitely painted full round arm of the Egyptian Princess, he turned to them in front once more, like one recalled from the realms of divine art to the worky-day world of actuality, and resumed the discussion of their present business.
'You will come then, to-morrow, Monsieur, and do me a study of the head of Sardanapalus. If by the time you have finished it, you display a talent worthy of being evoked, I will then accept you as one of my pupils. If not—which I do not, for the rest, anticipate—you will understand, Monsieur, in that case, that it will be with the greatest regret that I shall be compeled—ah, good; you recognise the necessity laid upon an artist.—Antoine! These gentlemen—my time, the time of an artist, is very precious. Good day, Monsieur, good day to you.'
'And if he accepts you, Hiram,' Audouin said, when they got outside, 'you'd better arrange to take an apartment somewhere with young Churchill—furnished apartments suitable for art-students are cheap at Rome, they tell me—and get your meals at a trattoria. That'll make your money go farther, I estimate.'.
Hiram sighed, and almost wished in his own heart that M. Seguin would have the kindness not to recognise in him a talent worthy of being evoked by so great a master. But alas, fate willed it otherwise. M. Seguin pronounced the head, though but feebly representing the mixed virile force and feminine delicacy of his own Sardanapalus, 'sufficiently well painted, as the work of a beginner;' and Hiram was forthwith duly enrolled among the great French painter's select pupils, to start work as soon as he had had a fortnight with Audouin, 'for inspecting the sights of the city.'