"Oh! oh!"
"I'll leave you to do it, or not; I don't ask it. But you're an honest man."
"Come, out with it!"
"Well, I'm prepared to bring you a father, mother, and only daughter."
"All for me?"
"Yes—they want their portraits taken. These bourgeois—they are crazy about art—have never dared to enter a studio. The girl has a 'dot' of a hundred thousand francs. You can paint all three,—perhaps they'll turn out family portraits."
And with that the old Dutch log of wood who passed for a man and who was called Elie Magus, interrupted himself to laugh an uncanny laugh which frightened the painter. He fancied he heard Mephistopheles talking marriage.
"Portraits bring five hundred francs apiece," went on Elie; "so you can very well afford to paint me three pictures."
"True for you!" cried Fougeres, gleefully.
"And if you marry the girl, you won't forget me."