"I hope you're right, I'm sure," said the office boy indifferently. "All the same I had anticipated this case."
He gave this retrospective prophecy with the air of one who knows life not merely from legal document, but from every angle of personal observation.
"What do you mean?" asked Dauras and Lestaque, who had but one thought in common.
"Well, one day at the museum—"
"What were you doing at the museum?"
"Copying a deed, perhaps—one day at the museum, M. Derize was showing his wife the pictures. I was behind them—they had stopped in front of the portrait of an old man, all wrinkled, who, at first glance, looked very ugly to me."
"Who was the artist?" asked Vitrolle, before risking an opinion.
"I don't know—it's all the same to me."
"You have no taste."
"He was saying, 'Look at that face; see how it sums up the whole of peasant life with its daily struggles, its sorrows, its parsimony indelibly written in the wrinkles, its dreams—and perhaps a little alcohol too—in the glassy eye.' He spoke excitedly, and said a lot of other things that I've forgotten. I profited by his lessons. But Madame Derize did not stir any more than a post. She certainly is beautiful, but I find her too impassive. Really, I thought the old man quite alive, instead of just a portrait in a frame hanging on the wall."