The concierge disappeared.
“Ouf!” Phil gave a sigh of relief. “The old man, with his good old times, was starting off on his remembrances. He is in for two hours when he begins with the Louvre garden. Bah! that’s all fol-de-rol,” he added, smoothing his hair with his hand, “not to speak of my having so many things to do this morning. Let’s see: first, Miss Rowrer; then the duke is to bring Helia. It appears that Helia has the legendary Morgana type,—so the duke told me, after seeing her last night,—and, at the duke’s request, she agrees to pose for my picture. Oh, I was forgetting! I am expecting Caracal also.”
Phil detested Caracal. This critic was his bête noire, a man sweet and bitter at the same time, who talked of him behind his back as a painter for pork-packers and a dauber without talent.
Phil had never forgotten his first impression of the critic. He met him shortly after his arrival in Paris, in the studio of the sculptor Poufaille, and later on in the Restaurant de la Mère Michel, and at the Café des Deux Magots, during his student years. Caracal was outwardly correct and an intimate friend of the duke, and he was received at the Rowrers’; and Phil had to be agreeable to him. Nevertheless, he was going to play him a trick.
As he opened the morning paper, Phil looked around to assure himself that the pictures in his studio had their faces turned to the wall, and that his painting of the Fata Morgana was covered with a veil. It was for Caracal’s benefit that he had made these arrangements the evening before; and he smiled as he gave a glance at the portière which separated his studio from a little adjoining room, where his trick was ready.
“Ah, I’m commonplace, am I—no originality? We shall see!” he said to himself, laughing.
“What’s the news?” Phil went on, as he looked absently through the paper. “‘A Description of the Bal des Quat’z-Arts.’ Pass!—‘A Case of Treason.’ Pass!—‘War Declared.’ Diable! ‘The Fleet of the Prince of Monaco Threatening English Ports.’ Pass!—Good! Here’s another extract from the ‘Tocsin’: ‘The Tomb of Richard the Lion-hearted to be Stolen from France! Interference of Yankee Gold in French Politics,’ signed ‘An Indignant Patriot.’”
The foolishness of the article did not prevent Phil’s reading it to the end.
“That’s all very amusing,” he thought; “but why these personal allusions? What have the Rowrers to do with it? And who can be writing such nonsense?”
Phil turned the page disdainfully, when a sound in the room made him lift his eyes.