"I cannot come to Bellevue," my husband concluded, "for I must do this portrait at once. The foreign gentleman says he is to be received at the Elysée very soon, and he wants to ask the President to sign his name at the foot of my picture.... I should, of course, paint the portrait from a photograph which the gentleman has brought...."
To me all this sounded suspicious, and I told my husband so. "I don't like the idea of President Fallières' autograph under your drawing.... Why don't you tell this wealthy collector to apply to our friend Bonnat?"
The telephone worked indifferently that day, and I could not quite catch the meaning of my husband's reply, so I said: "Please refuse to draw that portrait. At any rate, let the matter stand over for a day or two. Find some pretext and come to see me here."
He came.... The Buisson family were present when he explained to me that the foreigner was quite reliable and that he had promised to bring to the studio two German Princes....
I asked him whether the wealthy foreigner was a German, and he replied in the affirmative. Then, reading a question in my eyes, he said hastily: "No, no... he is not the same man as the German you are thinking of!"
My husband spoke so well of the stranger that I felt almost ashamed of being so suspicious.
He returned to Paris and I remained with my daughter and the Buissons at Bellevue; but, try as I might, I could not keep the mysterious German out of my thoughts, and, becoming anxious about the safety of the Félix Faure documents, I returned to Paris twenty-four hours after my husband had left Bellevue.
At lunch my husband said: "I really must finish that portrait to-day, for this evening a messenger from the 'Grand Hotel' will come to fetch it. So please see that no one disturbs me this afternoon. The gentleman who ordered the Fallières portrait is dining to-night with the German Princes I told you about, and with several other personages, and he wishes to show the picture to them all."
He then asked me several times whether I would go out or remain at home, and it was quite clear that, for some reason which I could not guess, he was most anxious that I should not be in that afternoon. I had a presentiment that it would be better for me to remain at home, and that by doing so I might, perhaps, find out something about this strange commission.
Besides, my dressmaker was there, and I was expecting a few friends. My time was, therefore, fully occupied, and I did not go up to my husband's studio.