M. Saval replied:
“Why, yes.”
The artist said: “Well! you'll go out and buy for me five francs' worth of wax-candles while I go and see the cooper.”
And he pushed the notary in his evening coat into the street. At the end of five minutes, they had returned, one of them with the wax-candles and the other with the hoop of a cask. Then Romantin plunged his hand into a cupboard, and drew forth twenty empty bottles, which he fixed in the form of a crown around the hoop.
He then went downstairs to borrow a ladder from the janitress, after having explained that he had made interest with the old woman by painting the portrait of her cat, exhibited on the easel.
When he returned with the ladder, he said to M. Saval:
“Are you active?”
The other, without understanding, answered:
“Why, yes.”
“Well, you just climb up there, and fasten this chandelier for me to the ring of the ceiling. Then, you put a wax-candle in each bottle, and light it. I tell you I have a genius for lighting up. But off with your coat, damn it! You are just like a Jeames.”