‘“I suppose you recognise that? Well, he taught me! I should think I ought to know my trade!”
‘The man looked guiltily embarrassed, and was silent. I said sorrowfully:
‘“You don’t mean to intimate that you don’t know the cipher of Francois Millet!”
‘Of course he didn’t know that cipher; but he was the gratefullest man you ever saw, just the same, for being let out of an uncomfortable place on such easy terms. He said:
‘“No! Why, it is Millet’s, sure enough! I don’t know what I could have been thinking of. Of course I recognise it now.”
‘Next, he wanted to buy it; but I said that although I wasn’t rich I wasn’t that poor. However, at last, I let him have it for eight hundred francs.’
‘Eight hundred!’
‘Yes. Millet would have sold it for a pork chop. Yes, I got eight hundred francs for that little thing. I wish I could get it back for eighty thousand. But that time’s gone by. I made a very nice picture of that man’s house and I wanted to offer it to him for ten francs, but that wouldn’t answer, seeing I was the pupil of such a master, so I sold it to him for a hundred. I sent the eight hundred francs straight to Millet from that town and struck out again next day.
‘But I didn’t walk—no. I rode. I have ridden ever since. I sold one picture every day, and never tried to sell two. I always said to my customer:
‘“I am a fool to sell a picture of Francois Millet’s at all, for that man is not going to live three months, and when he dies his pictures can’t be had for love or money.”